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Speaker 1: Hey, Daniel, when they operate a big complicated machine like

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Speaker 1: the large Hadron Collider, Like, what's the worst that can happen?

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Speaker 2: Ooh, other than pressing the wrong button and destroying a

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Speaker 2: ten billion dollars science experiment?

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Speaker 1: Can it get worse than that?

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Speaker 2: I guess you could make a black hole that destroys

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Speaker 2: the world.

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Speaker 1: And now is that the absolute worst?

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Speaker 2: Actually? No, the absolute worst is if the whole thing

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Speaker 2: runs perfectly and nothing interesting happens.

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Speaker 1: What's wrong with that?

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Speaker 2: Well, then we'll have spent like ten billion dollars and

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Speaker 2: learn nothing.

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Speaker 1: And that's worse than destroying the whole planet.

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Speaker 2: Yes, learning nothing is worse. Destroying the planet would be

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Speaker 2: a great outcome. We'd learned so much.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we learned not to get physicists ten billion dollars.

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Speaker 2: You can make that decision from inside the black hole.

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Speaker 1: No, it'd already have been too late. We would learn

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Speaker 1: our lesson for a brief second before we all die.

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Speaker 3: Hi.

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Speaker 1: I'm jorheam a cartoonists and the author of Oliver's Great

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Speaker 1: Big Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist at professor at

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Speaker 2: UC Irvine, and I'm desperate to discover something before I retire.

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Speaker 1: Before you retire, or before you destroy the world.

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Speaker 2: One and the same.

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Speaker 1: Wait, I thought it would destroy the world. You would

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Speaker 1: learn a lot, but then you would be retired.

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Speaker 2: Exactly. I want to go out with a bang, learn something,

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Speaker 2: and retire all on the same day.

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Speaker 1: You know you can do that on your own. You

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Speaker 1: don't have to involve the rest of us.

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Speaker 2: I'm not so selfish. I want to include everybody.

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Speaker 1: It would be preferable if you don't destroy the world

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Speaker 1: in your little personal curiosity quest.

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Speaker 2: Some people just don't know what they want until they

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Speaker 2: get it. Isn't that what Steve Jobs said?

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Speaker 1: Well, I definitely know I don't want to die in

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Speaker 1: a black hole.

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Speaker 2: Waituntil Apple releases a souit per slickt black hole that

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Speaker 2: nobody can resist.

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Speaker 1: Oh I see is that the new I Die two

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Speaker 1: point zero?

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Speaker 2: Yes? Better than the Eyehole. I don't know what that's for.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I want neither of those, please, but anyways, Welcome

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Speaker 1: to our podcast Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: In which we try to widen the gap between the

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Speaker 2: moment we understand the universe and the moment we all perish.

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Speaker 2: We want everybody out there to understand the nature of

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Speaker 2: this crazy, beautiful, bizarre reality, and we want to enjoy

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Speaker 2: that understanding as long as possible before our eventual demise.

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Speaker 2: We hope that this podcast helps you bridge that gap,

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Speaker 2: and until we do gain that final understanding of nature,

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Speaker 2: we can fill you in on everything we do and

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Speaker 2: do not understand along the way.

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Speaker 1: That's right, because it is a mysterious and confounding universe

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Speaker 1: full of interesting phenomena that we are still discovering and

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Speaker 1: learning about every day. Everyday, scientists are making new discoveries

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Speaker 1: about how things work, how they don't work, and what

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Speaker 1: is and isn't they.

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Speaker 2: And remember that research is exploration. When you think back

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Speaker 2: to the story of scientific discovery, it seems like a

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Speaker 2: very linear path. We discovered A then B THN, c THN, D, so,

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Speaker 2: E and F were obvious right well back in the day,

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Speaker 2: they weren't so obvious. There were lots of hints in

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Speaker 2: various directions, and the path forward was not clear. Here

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Speaker 2: we are on the forefront of human understanding or ignorance,

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Speaker 2: and we don't know which direction science will take us.

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Speaker 2: We don't know which hint will turn out to unravel

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Speaker 2: our entire understanding of the universe, and which will turn

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Speaker 2: out to just have been a loose cable.

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Speaker 1: And which one will hopefully not destroy the world. I

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Speaker 1: mean that's always a good thing, right.

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Speaker 2: I mean that's the secondary consideration. But yes, I.

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Speaker 1: Think Daniel, each episode you sound more and more like

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Speaker 1: a superhero villain.

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Speaker 2: I'm working on my mad scientist cackle. I haven't had

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Speaker 2: a protect it yet.

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Speaker 1: Are they going to make the large hydron collider now

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Speaker 1: be activated by like a snap of your fingers. You

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Speaker 1: have to put on like a glove and you have

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Speaker 1: to snap your fingers to be activated.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, is that the plan? Yeah? We hired a whole

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Speaker 2: team from Marvel to help us design the interface.

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Speaker 1: Oh there you go. So that mean you wear capes

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Speaker 1: as well.

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Speaker 2: It's a reverse the usual. Often marvels hiring scientists to

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Speaker 2: be advisors on their films, but we're actually hiring the

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Speaker 2: Marvel folks to tell us how to make our installations

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Speaker 2: look super slick.

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Speaker 1: I have to make it more exciting for people. What

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Speaker 1: would be nice if this podcast made some of that

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Speaker 1: Marvel money, You know what I'm saying.

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Speaker 2: Yes, that's exactly the plan. This is step one.

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Speaker 1: Right now, we're just making DC money, which is not

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Speaker 1: a lot.

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Speaker 2: But particle physics isn't all about the Benjamins. It's about

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Speaker 2: the discoveries. It's about those moments when you force the

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Speaker 2: universe to reveal the way it actually works. And the

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Speaker 2: most delicious moments are the ones when we understand the

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Speaker 2: universe is quite different from how we expected it.

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Speaker 1: Yes, you said, science is all about exploration and following

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Speaker 1: ideas and maybe promising directions, and sometimes you discover that

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Speaker 1: things don't quite work the way you thought.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes those discoveries are clear and dramatic, like when we

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Speaker 2: found the Higgs boson, and everybody can see the very,

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Speaker 2: very persuasive peak in our data. Sometimes, though, the discoveries

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Speaker 2: begin with little hints, little things in our data that

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Speaker 2: don't quite make sense, little clues that maybe some big

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Speaker 2: discovery is just over the horizon.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, although sometimes it seems like the horizon is getting

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Speaker 1: farther and farther away. I mean, when was the Higgs

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Speaker 1: boson discovered? It was a while though, right over ten years?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, twenty twelve.

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Speaker 1: Wow, time flies. That was a huge discovery. The whole

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Speaker 1: world got very excited about that. But since then, there

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Speaker 1: haven't been any new, big discoveries from the big collider there, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, because research is exploration. We didn't know

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Speaker 2: if there were tons and tons of new particles waiting

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Speaker 2: for us around the corner, or if it was mostly

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Speaker 2: just dust and rubble to be discovered. And the new

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Speaker 2: particles are around more and more corners, if they even exist.

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Speaker 2: That's the joy and disappointment of exploration.

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Speaker 1: So how's all that dust and rubble looking dusty and rubbing?

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Speaker 2: It gets hard to choke it down after a while,

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Speaker 2: I'll be honest.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's hard to swallow dust and rubble.

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Speaker 2: I mean, you always prefer to make exciting discoveries. When

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Speaker 2: they landed the rovers on Mars, I'm sure they were

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Speaker 2: hoping to find little squishy creatures under some of those rocks.

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Speaker 2: But you know, they've also just found dust and rubble.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't mean we're not going to keep looking.

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Speaker 1: But as you mentioned, science is about exploration, and so

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Speaker 1: right now, even though you've only found dust and rubble

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Speaker 1: for the last twelve years, there are maybe interesting things

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Speaker 1: that you've discovered or noticed about the universe that maybe

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Speaker 1: give you some excitement about continuing to explore.

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Speaker 2: That's right, because before we make a big discovery, we

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Speaker 2: often have hints that point us in that direction. Before

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Speaker 2: we've discovered how neutrinos can change from one kind into another,

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Speaker 2: we saw weird things in our measurements of neutrinos in

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Speaker 2: the sky. So particle physicists are always on the lookout

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Speaker 2: for the next anomaly, the next discrepancy, the next thing

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Speaker 2: we don't understand, because it might be a hint for

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Speaker 2: the next big discovery.

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Speaker 1: So to be on the program, we'll be tagling the

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Speaker 1: question what are the most promising particle physics anomalies?

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Speaker 4: Now?

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Speaker 1: These are anomalies, right, not anemonies anominees.

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Speaker 2: These are not our enemies either.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and we're not going to do this anonymously.

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Speaker 2: That's right, or according to memory?

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Speaker 1: Okay, you push the grammar there too far. I'm not

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Speaker 1: sure what the connection there.

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Speaker 2: Is anomalies and memories homomonies. My momides, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I think we've finished this upun

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Speaker 1: thread here.

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Speaker 2: The thing about anomalies is that they're indirect. They're just

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Speaker 2: something we don't understand about our data. So explanations could

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Speaker 2: be wow, something super exciting we're about to discover, or

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Speaker 2: it could be. Oops, turns out we didn't calibrate things correctly.

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Speaker 1: So what's the picture here? You're assorting third data, you're

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Speaker 1: finding mostly dust and rubble, but sometimes in the dust

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Speaker 1: and rubble you're like, maybe there's a little bit of

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Speaker 1: rubble here. Looks a little bit different than it should look.

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Speaker 2: Like, Yeah, exactly. It's a promising sign that maybe there's

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Speaker 2: something exciting there, but you need more data. It's sort

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Speaker 2: of like pictures of UFOs, like, oh, that would be

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Speaker 2: exciting if it really is a UFO, but the pictures

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Speaker 2: too fuzzy to really know. What you got to do

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Speaker 2: is get more data, crisper photos, more sensor information, something

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Speaker 2: like that.

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Speaker 1: Oh boy, did you just compare particle physics to UFO spotting?

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Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely, enthusiastically.

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Speaker 1: An area fifty two is cern area fifty two for

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Speaker 1: the big Large Hadron collider conspiracy.

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Speaker 2: I may or may not have signed an NDA prohibiting

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Speaker 2: me from answering that.

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Speaker 1: Question, prohibiting you from having a podcast where you talk about.

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Speaker 2: It for hours and hours, maybe or maybe not. I

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Speaker 2: think theas it's probably no. It sounds like no, no comment.

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Speaker 2: The other thing about anomalies is that sometimes they go away.

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Speaker 2: You know, all of our data is statistical. We can

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Speaker 2: never tell from one collision to the next whether there

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Speaker 2: was a new particle or a Higgs boson or just

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Speaker 2: something boring like protons glancing off of each other, and

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Speaker 2: so all of our data is statistical, which means there

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Speaker 2: are always little random wobbles. Sometimes those random wobbles can

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Speaker 2: look like a new particle or a UFO, and then

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Speaker 2: we gather more data and they just go away.

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Speaker 1: Well, as usually, we were wondering how many people out

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Speaker 1: there had thought about particle physics anomalies and what they

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Speaker 1: might mean, or which ones are the most promising.

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Speaker 2: Thanks very much to everybody who answers questions for the

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Speaker 2: audience participation segment of the podcast. We'd love to hear

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Speaker 2: your voice on the pod. Write me to Questions at

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Speaker 2: Danielandhorgney dot com to sign up. So think about it

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Speaker 2: for a second. What do you think are the most

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Speaker 2: promising particle physics anomalies? Not aneminees, here's what people have

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Speaker 2: to say.

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Speaker 5: I don't think it's possible to have an unexplained result

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Speaker 5: in a particle physics experiment because the theoretical physicists set

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Speaker 5: it all up and tell the experimental physicists where to

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Speaker 5: find it. So don't think it's going to be a particle.

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Speaker 5: I'm just wondering if maybe that bit where general relativity

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Speaker 5: does and quite fit quantum theory. What if, say Isaac

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Speaker 5: Newton was right all along and it is all about gravity,

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Speaker 5: and you've just left gravity out of the formulae and

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Speaker 5: the calculations because you don't think it's big enough. But

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Speaker 5: what if that proves Albert Einstein was wrong when he

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Speaker 5: said that Newton was not wrong but limited. He rewrote Newton.

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Speaker 5: What if Newton gets his revenge and Einstein's wrong? That

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Speaker 5: might make the nine o'clock news.

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Speaker 6: The only thing that comes to mind is the very

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Speaker 6: high energy cosmic rays that strike the upper atmosphere and

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Speaker 6: result in a shower of particles, some of which reach

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Speaker 6: the ground, and that baseball energy particle is coming from

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Speaker 6: a blazer.

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Speaker 3: I'm not aware of any specific unexplained particle experiment results,

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Speaker 3: but I guess in general terms the issue for particle

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Speaker 3: physicists to work through there would be is this unexpected

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Speaker 3: result something that can be explained by things that physicists

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Speaker 3: are generally already aware of, or is it something new

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Speaker 3: that they've discovered.

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Speaker 5: Well, I don't know that many experiments, but maybe the

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Speaker 5: penguin diagram and then has a cool name too.

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Speaker 7: I don't know much about particles experiment results and what

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Speaker 7: might be a real discovery, But if you could find

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Speaker 7: a way to entangle my son's socks in the laundry

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Speaker 7: so that when I find one, I always know where

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Speaker 7: the other one is, that would be really helpful.

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Speaker 1: Thanks byy.

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Speaker 4: I'm only aware of one unexplained particle result. It was

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Speaker 4: something to do with muons, either missing muons or many muons,

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Speaker 4: and either way, I'm hopeful that it spurs a discovery

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Speaker 4: of something smaller or some behavior that we're not expecting,

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Speaker 4: because that always opens up new questions and new avenues

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Speaker 4: for learning.

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Speaker 8: Guessing something like doc motel particle or a graviton something

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Speaker 8: of that nature. Other than not no idea.

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Speaker 1: Well, like asked that before answering that I would need

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Speaker 1: to learn what are the unexplained particle experiment results that

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Speaker 1: have been generated?

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Speaker 2: Please walk me through.

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Speaker 1: That, all right? Mostly clear, I've known you what you're

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Speaker 1: talking about.

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Speaker 2: That surprised me a little bit because particle physics anomalies

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Speaker 2: are often in the news and they're often like way overhyped.

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Speaker 2: I get emails from listeners asking me about some news

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Speaker 2: story that says that we're on the brink of a

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Speaker 2: complete revolution in particle physics because of some weird lips

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Speaker 2: somebody saw on their computer screen.

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Speaker 1: I guess it depends where you're getting your news. Is

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Speaker 1: it from the UFO newsletter? There?

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Speaker 2: No, you see this stuff covered in pretty mainstream press.

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Speaker 2: Sometimes the scientists are excited about their little anomaly and

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Speaker 2: they tell the PR people, and then by the time

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Speaker 2: it gets to science dot org they've transformed it into clear.

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Speaker 1: Well, didn't sound like any of our listeners here that

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Speaker 1: recorded their answer new of any physics anomaly, So maybe

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Speaker 1: the question should have been, do you know of any

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Speaker 1: particle physics anomalies?

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Speaker 2: We have covered a few on the podcast because there

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Speaker 2: are a few out there, a few areas where we

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Speaker 2: might be on the verge of discovering something new or

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Speaker 2: it could just go away when we gather more data.

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Speaker 1: M All right, well, let's jump into the subject. Daniel,

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Speaker 1: what do you describe as an anomaly? How do you

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Speaker 1: know if something is anomalous?

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Speaker 2: Something is an anomaly if it's a deviation from what

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Speaker 2: we expect, and what we expect usually is disappointment. So

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Speaker 2: we have a theory of particles, the standard model, that

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Speaker 2: has a bunch of particles in it and a bunch

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Speaker 2: of forces in it, and we can use that to

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Speaker 2: predict what we would see in experiments. So, for example,

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Speaker 2: if we smash protons together, the standard model tells us

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Speaker 2: how often they'll bounce off at this angle, how often

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Speaker 2: they'll bounce off at that angle, how often they'll make

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Speaker 2: a Z boson or a W boson or a top quark.

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Speaker 2: And we do a bunch of measurements and then we

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Speaker 2: compare them to the predictions from our theory. And when

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Speaker 2: things are bang on that's not anomalousts. And when there's

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Speaker 2: any difference there, when what we see in our experiments

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Speaker 2: collisions or cosmic rays or other kinds of experiments is

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Speaker 2: different from what the theory predicted, that tells us that

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Speaker 2: maybe there's something new going on, there's something happening in

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Speaker 2: the universe that's not captured by our theory.

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Speaker 1: Well, I guess it's a sort of an interesting dance

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Speaker 1: between theory and experiment. Like, for example, if something is

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Speaker 1: a theory and you expect it to be why did

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Speaker 1: you expect it to be if you didn't prove it

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Speaker 1: already before, or is this about extending the theory to

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Speaker 1: new phenomenon or to new situations.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, it's about extending the theory. Like the theory

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Speaker 2: may have worked well for all previous experiments, but now

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Speaker 2: we're in new territory. That's what we mean by exploration.

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Speaker 2: When you turn a collider on it new energies, for example,

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Speaker 2: you're creating conditions you haven't seen before. So maybe your

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Speaker 2: theory is going to break down. Maybe there's a new

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Speaker 2: particle that's going to be revealed that you need to

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Speaker 2: then incorporate into your theory. Maybe there's a new force

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Speaker 2: that's so weak you haven't seen it before, but at

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Speaker 2: very high energies it reveals itself. That's why we do

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Speaker 2: these experiments, hoping to force the universe to tell us

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Speaker 2: how things work.

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Speaker 1: I guess that's why in science you just call everything

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Speaker 1: a theory, right, because you always leave yourself open to

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Speaker 1: the possibility that your theory is wrong. The more you

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Speaker 1: explore the universe or the more different situations you go

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Speaker 1: out during test.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The point of the standard model is not

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Speaker 2: to say this is definitive. This is how the universe works.

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Speaker 2: It's a working project. It describes everything we know so far.

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Speaker 2: It's like our current hypothesis. But we're always hoping to

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Speaker 2: update it.

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Speaker 1: Right, right, And that's why you called it the standard model,

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Speaker 1: unequivocally the way things are. That's why you called it that, right, That's.

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Speaker 2: Why I called it that. Yeah, it was named in

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Speaker 2: a paper that came out a few years before I

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Speaker 2: was born. But I'll totally take the blame for it

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Speaker 2: being called the standard model.

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Speaker 1: Well, you're continuing to use it that you're complicit.

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Speaker 2: I think I heard you say it. Also, are you complicit?

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Speaker 1: How I said it?

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Speaker 2: You just called it the standard model, although derisively of course.

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Speaker 1: I said, that's why you call it this standard model.

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Speaker 2: Anyway, it's a standard model, but it's also changed over time.

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Speaker 7: Right.

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Speaker 2: We added neutrino masses to the standard model. So there's

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Speaker 2: actually a big argument about what exactly is the standard model,

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Speaker 2: which means it's not exactly standard. But the point is

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Speaker 2: that we have a theory, we're developing it, we're testing

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Speaker 2: it by doing these experiments, either by pushing to new

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Speaker 2: energies or by looking out in space or creating conditions

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Speaker 2: we've never explored before. We're hoping that one of those

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Speaker 2: has an anomaly, a discrepancy from our prediction that shows

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Speaker 2: us that there's something new in the universe that we

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Speaker 2: need to describe with our theory.

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Speaker 1: And this generally falls into sort of the different ways

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Speaker 1: that you discover something, not just in signs, but in

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Speaker 1: particular in particle physics. You can either look for things

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Speaker 1: directly or indirectly, right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the direct way is the most convincing and the

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Speaker 2: most exciting. Like if you can actually create this new

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Speaker 2: particle so it exists in the universe in your experiment,

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Speaker 2: then you can sort of see it. I mean, we

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Speaker 2: never actually see these things very directly, but we can

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Speaker 2: see evidence of it. It was there, It left traces

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Speaker 2: of the particles that decayed into That's how we discover

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Speaker 2: the Higgs boson. That's how we discovered the top quark.

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Speaker 2: We have a bunch of episodes about the discovery of

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Speaker 2: each of these particles that tells you the story about

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Speaker 2: how it was seeing, how it became convinced that it

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Speaker 2: was there.

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Speaker 1: Meaning like you think that it's there in a particular spot,

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Speaker 1: you go look for it there in that spot and

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Speaker 1: then you find it yeah, or.

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Speaker 2: We're not sure exactly. We say it's somewhere in this

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Speaker 2: territory and then we look around and we find it

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Speaker 2: within that range. Like the Higgs boson, we didn't know

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Speaker 2: in advance how heavy it would be, how much mass

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Speaker 2: it had. There was a huge range of ideas, so

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Speaker 2: we had to go out and scan that whole range.

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Speaker 2: But we found it in that range and we were

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Speaker 2: able to measure it, and that's what we call it

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Speaker 2: direct measurement, even though some parts of those measurements, of

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Speaker 2: course are indirect.

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Speaker 1: So then what is indirect discovery?

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Speaker 2: So the distinction between a direct discovery and indirect is

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Speaker 2: a little bit fuzzy because you know everything is in

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Speaker 2: the end indirect, but some measurements are more indirect than others. Like,

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Speaker 2: for example, if you don't have enough energy to actually

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Speaker 2: create the particle to exist in your experiment, but you

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Speaker 2: can still interact with the fields that are out there

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Speaker 2: that could make that particle, then that's more indirect because

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Speaker 2: you're never actually creating the particle, but the fields themselves

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Speaker 2: can still influence your experiment, Like if your protons interact

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Speaker 2: with those fields and it changes how they behave. Then

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Speaker 2: you don't see those fields directly, but you see the

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Speaker 2: influence of the fields on the particles that you are studying.

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Speaker 1: That's not indirect man, Like you're not looking for it,

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Speaker 1: but you see some anomaly, which is sort of the

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Speaker 1: topic of our discussion here.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly right. But we use these indirect measurements

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Speaker 2: as a way to like catch some new thing, something

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Speaker 2: we're not looking for. Like, very very precise measurements of

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Speaker 2: the particles we do know can sometimes reveal anomalies, which

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Speaker 2: are clues that there's something out there influencing those particles.

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Speaker 2: So that's why we sometimes make very very precise measurements

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Speaker 2: of the particles we already know about, so we can

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Speaker 2: look for little deviations that would tell us there's something

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Speaker 2: there we weren't looking for directly.

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Speaker 1: So for example, like we've discovered the Higgs boson and

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Speaker 1: we sort of know where to find and what looks

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Speaker 1: like and how it comes out. But maybe if you

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Speaker 1: generate a whole bunch of Higgs bosons at one after

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Speaker 1: the other, maybe in doing that you can discover something

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Speaker 1: weird that happens that you didn't think about before, that

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Speaker 1: happens related to the Higgs boson.

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Speaker 2: And that's exactly what we're doing right now. We discovered

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Speaker 2: the Higgs boson ten years ago, and since then we've

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Speaker 2: made huge numbers of them, piles and piles of Higgs bosons.

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Speaker 2: We've been studying them, looking for anomalies, looking to see

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Speaker 2: if the Higgs boson behaves in any weird new ways,

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Speaker 2: because if it does, we'll need some other element of

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Speaker 2: our theory to explain that. It will be a hint

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Speaker 2: that there's something else beyond the Higgs boson for us

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Speaker 2: to discover.

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Speaker 1: Like instead of digging a hole in the field looking

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Speaker 1: for something, you're maybe looking closer at the rock until

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Speaker 1: you discover something that maybe you didn't.

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Speaker 2: Expect, yeah, exactly. Or if you're looking for like weird

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Speaker 2: new animals in the forest, like you suspect maybe Bigfoot

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Speaker 2: is out there, you don't know how to look for

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Speaker 2: big Foot directly, then you can look for other signs,

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Speaker 2: you know, you like, look to see if there's any

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Speaker 2: weird scratches on all the tra or if any neighborhood

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Speaker 2: pets are missing, you like, make measurements of the things

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Speaker 2: that you can to look for weirdness, any deviation from

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Speaker 2: the ways trees and pets normally behave would give you

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Speaker 2: a clue that there's something out there in the forest

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Speaker 2: to discover.

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Speaker 1: Like you would study maybe cats and pay attention to cats,

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Speaker 1: and you think, well, if there's no bigfoot, then cats

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Speaker 1: should behave this way. And if you find that cats,

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Speaker 1: you know, avoid a certain area of forest for example,

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Speaker 1: or get really skittish if you put on a gorilla

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Speaker 1: suit or something, then you know, oh, maybe there's some

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Speaker 1: evidence here or an anomaly that tells you maybe there's

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Speaker 1: a bigfoot exactly.

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Speaker 2: And the tricky thing there is that there could be

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Speaker 2: multiple explanations. Your cats could be scared of you in

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Speaker 2: a goerrilla costume because there's a big foot in the forest,

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Speaker 2: or just because you look scary in a gorilla costume.

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Speaker 2: So the thing about indirect measurements is that they can

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Speaker 2: give you a hint of for lots of new things,

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Speaker 2: but also they're frustratingly indirect.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if only you could just ask the cats, right,

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Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's get into what are some famous

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Speaker 1: anomalies that have led to this discoveries in science, and

443
00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:04,760
Speaker 1: then let's get to the most exciting and promising ones

444
00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:08,280
Speaker 1: in physics today. We'll dig into that, but first let's

445
00:21:08,359 --> 00:21:09,359
Speaker 1: take a quick break.

446
00:21:21,880 --> 00:21:22,199
Speaker 2: All right.

447
00:21:22,200 --> 00:21:26,679
Speaker 1: We're talking about the most promising particle physics anomalies, the

448
00:21:26,720 --> 00:21:28,920
Speaker 1: weirdest things out there that might point to the most

449
00:21:28,920 --> 00:21:32,120
Speaker 1: exciting new discoveries in the future. And we've talked about

450
00:21:32,119 --> 00:21:35,439
Speaker 1: what an anomaly is, Daniel. What are some examples of

451
00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:39,200
Speaker 1: anomalies and physics that have led to very interesting discoveries.

452
00:21:39,480 --> 00:21:41,280
Speaker 2: Well, one of the most famous, of course, is the

453
00:21:41,280 --> 00:21:44,760
Speaker 2: measurement of how galaxies rotate. People thought they understood how

454
00:21:44,800 --> 00:21:47,879
Speaker 2: galaxy spun and how much mass there was in a galaxy,

455
00:21:48,320 --> 00:21:50,200
Speaker 2: and they went out there to check to say, hey,

456
00:21:50,400 --> 00:21:53,280
Speaker 2: are stars rotating at the speeds we expect around the

457
00:21:53,320 --> 00:21:55,800
Speaker 2: center of galaxies? And it turns out they weren't. They

458
00:21:55,840 --> 00:21:59,199
Speaker 2: were rotating much much faster than people expected, and that

459
00:21:59,240 --> 00:22:02,000
Speaker 2: was an anomaly. It was a discrepancy from what people

460
00:22:02,040 --> 00:22:05,359
Speaker 2: predicted and expected. And to explain that, of course, is

461
00:22:05,359 --> 00:22:08,480
Speaker 2: the whole idea of dark matter still to be resolved

462
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 2: and understood in detail at the particle level. But maybe

463
00:22:11,280 --> 00:22:14,200
Speaker 2: one of the biggest anomalies we've ever seen in physics.

464
00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:17,119
Speaker 1: Mmm. And wasn't that done by a grad student or

465
00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:19,800
Speaker 1: something like it's some lowly gratudent and good assign the

466
00:22:19,880 --> 00:22:22,000
Speaker 1: task of like, yeah, I just check the galaxy rotations

467
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:25,120
Speaker 1: and then that gratsuand was like, wait a minute.

468
00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:27,480
Speaker 2: There's some hints early on in the century from France

469
00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:30,640
Speaker 2: Swiki and then Vera Rubin really did the most detailed

470
00:22:30,680 --> 00:22:33,919
Speaker 2: analysis of galactic rotation curves, so she gets most of

471
00:22:33,960 --> 00:22:36,320
Speaker 2: the credit, although she was overlooked for the Nobel Prize.

472
00:22:36,359 --> 00:22:39,840
Speaker 2: Of course, what not a great track record on the

473
00:22:39,840 --> 00:22:41,600
Speaker 2: Nobel Prize for assigning credit to women.

474
00:22:42,000 --> 00:22:44,879
Speaker 1: M And that trying to be a huge discovery, right,

475
00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:47,560
Speaker 1: I mean we found that there's five times more dark

476
00:22:47,600 --> 00:22:49,919
Speaker 1: matter then there's regular matter in the universe. I mean

477
00:22:49,960 --> 00:22:52,879
Speaker 1: it's like five times everything that we know about that exists.

478
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:54,879
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And this is why we go out and

479
00:22:54,960 --> 00:22:58,480
Speaker 2: make really precise measurements of things we think we already understand,

480
00:22:58,720 --> 00:23:02,639
Speaker 2: because they can reveal things hiding under the surface, things

481
00:23:02,720 --> 00:23:04,000
Speaker 2: waiting to be discovered.

482
00:23:04,240 --> 00:23:07,240
Speaker 1: Mmmm. What's another famous anomaly.

483
00:23:07,440 --> 00:23:10,240
Speaker 2: Well, people tried to understand how many neutrinos are coming

484
00:23:10,240 --> 00:23:12,480
Speaker 2: to Earth. So they built a big detector underground to

485
00:23:12,520 --> 00:23:15,480
Speaker 2: measure the rate of neutrinos, and they compared that to

486
00:23:15,600 --> 00:23:17,959
Speaker 2: their prediction for how many neutrinos are being made by

487
00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:20,240
Speaker 2: the Sun and how many should arrive on Earth. And

488
00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:24,200
Speaker 2: they discovered they were seeing way fewer neutrinos than they expected,

489
00:23:24,359 --> 00:23:27,320
Speaker 2: and for decades people didn't understand this. Then it turns

490
00:23:27,320 --> 00:23:30,240
Speaker 2: out that's because neutrinos can change their type as they

491
00:23:30,240 --> 00:23:33,320
Speaker 2: fly between the Sun and here if electron neutrinos can

492
00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:35,920
Speaker 2: turn into mew on neutrinos and town neutrinos, which those

493
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:39,480
Speaker 2: detectors were not spotting. That was a huge discovery which

494
00:23:39,520 --> 00:23:41,439
Speaker 2: started from an anomaly. Mmm.

495
00:23:41,800 --> 00:23:43,040
Speaker 1: And did that person get credit?

496
00:23:43,200 --> 00:23:45,879
Speaker 2: Those guys won the Nobel Prize? Yes, old white dudes

497
00:23:45,880 --> 00:23:46,639
Speaker 2: always get credit.

498
00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:47,920
Speaker 1: Emphasis und the word guys.

499
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:48,200
Speaker 7: Yes.

500
00:23:48,520 --> 00:23:51,520
Speaker 1: Funny how that worried? All right, Well, let's pivot now

501
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:54,760
Speaker 1: to maybe some of them was current exciting anomalies. What

502
00:23:54,800 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 1: are some of the things that scientists have found and

503
00:23:56,760 --> 00:23:57,600
Speaker 1: make them go huh.

504
00:23:57,640 --> 00:23:59,800
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of stuff going on that we don't understand.

505
00:24:00,119 --> 00:24:03,199
Speaker 2: There are weird particles we see in cosmic rays from space.

506
00:24:03,600 --> 00:24:06,360
Speaker 2: There are bizarre things going on with muons and their

507
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:09,879
Speaker 2: magnetic moments. There's all sorts of confusion about how the

508
00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:13,199
Speaker 2: universe is expanding, there's always like five or ten of

509
00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:15,399
Speaker 2: these things going on. Sometimes they fade away as we

510
00:24:15,480 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 2: get more data, but some of these have persisted for

511
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:18,560
Speaker 2: a few years.

512
00:24:20,160 --> 00:24:22,879
Speaker 1: Well, to take a deeper dive into this topic of

513
00:24:22,920 --> 00:24:26,639
Speaker 1: anomalies and audities out there in space, Daniel, you talked

514
00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:28,440
Speaker 1: to another particle physicists.

515
00:24:28,760 --> 00:24:30,280
Speaker 2: That's right. I had a lot of fun talking with

516
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:32,719
Speaker 2: Harry Cliff. He's a particle physicist who works on a

517
00:24:32,760 --> 00:24:36,679
Speaker 2: different experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. It's called LHCb

518
00:24:37,280 --> 00:24:39,720
Speaker 2: B for studying bottom quarks, though he prefers to call

519
00:24:39,760 --> 00:24:42,440
Speaker 2: them beauty quarks. And he just came out with a

520
00:24:42,480 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 2: new book called Space Oddities, which is a really accessible

521
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:49,359
Speaker 2: and fun tour through some of these anomalies in particle physics.

522
00:24:49,480 --> 00:24:51,520
Speaker 1: Isn't that the title is like a David Bowie song

523
00:24:51,600 --> 00:24:52,000
Speaker 1: or something.

524
00:24:52,280 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 2: Not an expert, but I hope he's publishing. How it's

525
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:54,760
Speaker 2: cleared the rights?

526
00:24:55,680 --> 00:24:59,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, otherwise you're going to have an anomal lawsuit there.

527
00:25:00,680 --> 00:25:03,680
Speaker 1: All right, Well, here is Daniel's conversation with particle physicist

528
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:04,720
Speaker 1: Harry Cliff.

529
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 2: Okay, so then it's my great pleasure to welcome to

530
00:25:08,000 --> 00:25:11,200
Speaker 2: the podcast, doctor Harry Cliff, He's a colleague of mine

531
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 2: and also the author of the new book Space Oddities,

532
00:25:14,600 --> 00:25:17,160
Speaker 2: an excellent and fun exploration of a bunch of really

533
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 2: weird stuff we see in particle physics right now, Harry,

534
00:25:20,000 --> 00:25:21,439
Speaker 2: thanks very much for joining us today.

535
00:25:21,800 --> 00:25:23,120
Speaker 9: Well, thanks for having on the podcast.

536
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:26,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I really enjoyed reading your book. I love

537
00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:28,840
Speaker 2: thinking about all the weird stuff that we're seeing and

538
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:32,080
Speaker 2: all the funky stuff on the horizons of the frontiers

539
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 2: of physics, in the things that might lead to the

540
00:25:34,280 --> 00:25:37,760
Speaker 2: next big breakthrough. Tell me what exactly inspired you to

541
00:25:37,800 --> 00:25:38,880
Speaker 2: write this book right now?

542
00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,119
Speaker 9: The idea really came out of my own research.

543
00:25:41,160 --> 00:25:43,720
Speaker 10: So I work, like you on the Large Hadron Collider,

544
00:25:43,760 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 10: this big particle accelerator outside Geneva. So I work on

545
00:25:46,400 --> 00:25:48,800
Speaker 10: an experiment called LHCb, which is one of the four

546
00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:52,399
Speaker 10: main detectors spased around the ring. And the B in

547
00:25:52,560 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 10: LHCb stands for Beauty, which is the name of one

548
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:59,520
Speaker 10: of the quarks. So these six fundamental particles, two of

549
00:25:59,560 --> 00:26:03,040
Speaker 10: which make up nuclear material in ordinary atoms, and the

550
00:26:03,080 --> 00:26:07,399
Speaker 10: Bee quark is the heaviest negatively charged quark. It is

551
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:09,640
Speaker 10: the fifth heaviest overall, so it's quite an exotic thing.

552
00:26:09,760 --> 00:26:11,800
Speaker 2: Let me just interrupt you to orient our listeners because

553
00:26:11,800 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 2: on the podcast we often refer to this as the

554
00:26:13,960 --> 00:26:16,560
Speaker 2: bottom quirk, but you're calling it the beauty quirk. Is

555
00:26:16,560 --> 00:26:18,399
Speaker 2: that just because you don't like saying the word bottom

556
00:26:18,480 --> 00:26:19,160
Speaker 2: in your research?

557
00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 10: I think so that the history of this is that

558
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:26,479
Speaker 10: when the B and the T quarks were proposed, there

559
00:26:26,480 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 10: were some people that tried to call them beauty and truth,

560
00:26:29,160 --> 00:26:31,880
Speaker 10: and I think this was sort of to mirror charm and.

561
00:26:31,840 --> 00:26:34,280
Speaker 9: Strange, which are the two second generation quarks.

562
00:26:34,280 --> 00:26:36,600
Speaker 10: But physicists, I think Broady decided that was a bit

563
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 10: too poetic, so they plumped for the more prosaic top

564
00:26:39,080 --> 00:26:39,520
Speaker 10: and bottom.

565
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 9: So most physicists call them top and bottom. But there's

566
00:26:41,800 --> 00:26:42,360
Speaker 9: this weird.

567
00:26:42,200 --> 00:26:44,359
Speaker 10: Thing in what we call flavor physics that we prefer

568
00:26:44,480 --> 00:26:47,000
Speaker 10: to be known as beauty physicists and bottom physicists. So

569
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,600
Speaker 10: for us it's beauty, but yeah, most other physicists call

570
00:26:49,600 --> 00:26:50,280
Speaker 10: it the bottom cork.

571
00:26:50,320 --> 00:26:51,160
Speaker 9: But they are the same.

572
00:26:51,000 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 2: Thing, right, because I did my PhD on the top quirk,

573
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,480
Speaker 2: and we had no issues calling ourselves top quark physicists

574
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,240
Speaker 2: or top physicists. But I can see how bottom physicis.

575
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:02,720
Speaker 9: Les positive yeah.

576
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:05,680
Speaker 2: Anyway, so you were working on the beauty quarks and

577
00:27:05,760 --> 00:27:07,159
Speaker 2: you saw some weird stuff tell us.

578
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:09,960
Speaker 10: Yeah, So these quarks are really interesting to study because

579
00:27:09,960 --> 00:27:12,800
Speaker 10: they're very heavy. They can decay to a very wide

580
00:27:12,920 --> 00:27:16,080
Speaker 10: range of different standard model particles. So when they're created,

581
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 10: they live for a really tiny fraction of a second,

582
00:27:18,000 --> 00:27:20,240
Speaker 10: about one and a half trillions of a second. That's

583
00:27:20,320 --> 00:27:22,520
Speaker 10: long enough them to fly a little distance in your

584
00:27:22,520 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 10: detector because they're going at the speed of light, and

585
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:27,919
Speaker 10: then they decay, and there are certain very rare decay

586
00:27:27,960 --> 00:27:30,360
Speaker 10: modes of these quarks. So basically that means that let's

587
00:27:30,359 --> 00:27:32,399
Speaker 10: say you had a million of these beauty quarks created

588
00:27:32,400 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 10: in your experiment, only around one of them would decay.

589
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:37,360
Speaker 9: In one of these very rare ways.

590
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:40,760
Speaker 10: And these rare decays are very interesting because basically, in

591
00:27:40,800 --> 00:27:43,680
Speaker 10: our current theory of particle physics, the way these decays

592
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 10: happen involves lots of complicated interactions of heavy particles, which

593
00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:50,399
Speaker 10: makes them very suppressed. But if there is say a

594
00:27:50,480 --> 00:27:54,200
Speaker 10: new force of nature that exists, which may be very weak,

595
00:27:54,800 --> 00:27:57,760
Speaker 10: it can actually contribute to this decay process, and it

596
00:27:57,800 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 10: can alter the measured properties of these decay so it

597
00:28:00,760 --> 00:28:03,840
Speaker 10: might change, for example, how often the decays happen. It

598
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:06,480
Speaker 10: might change the angles the particles that come out of

599
00:28:06,520 --> 00:28:09,440
Speaker 10: these beauty cork decays emerge at. So the basic game

600
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:12,000
Speaker 10: we play is you make very very precise measurements of

601
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:15,320
Speaker 10: these beautyquark decays. You compare them to hopefully a precise

602
00:28:15,359 --> 00:28:18,439
Speaker 10: theoretical prediction using the standard model of particle physics, and

603
00:28:18,440 --> 00:28:21,119
Speaker 10: if you see a difference, that can be an indirect

604
00:28:21,119 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 10: clue that something new, something beyond our current understanding, is

605
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:27,400
Speaker 10: altering these decays, and that kind of gives you an

606
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:30,119
Speaker 10: inkling to the existence of, say a new force or

607
00:28:30,160 --> 00:28:32,880
Speaker 10: some new heavy particle that we haven't seen before. So

608
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:34,880
Speaker 10: that's the sort of general the game we play lh

609
00:28:34,880 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 10: to be broadly speaking, And for the last ten years,

610
00:28:37,160 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 10: starting in about twenty fourteen, we've been seeing these anomalies

611
00:28:40,600 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 10: in these very rare decays, so basically measurements that weren't

612
00:28:44,240 --> 00:28:46,479
Speaker 10: lining up with the prediction of the standard model, and

613
00:28:46,520 --> 00:28:49,320
Speaker 10: in some cases these were how often these decays was

614
00:28:49,320 --> 00:28:51,960
Speaker 10: happening was different from what was predicted. Sometimes it was

615
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 10: the angles. And what was intriguing about this is over time,

616
00:28:56,360 --> 00:28:58,680
Speaker 10: more and more of these anomalies emerged, and they seem

617
00:28:58,720 --> 00:29:01,800
Speaker 10: to paint a coherent picture. So it looked like these

618
00:29:01,840 --> 00:29:06,000
Speaker 10: were all coming from some new fundamental interactions. So the

619
00:29:06,040 --> 00:29:09,320
Speaker 10: most common explanations involved, broadly speaking, some kind of new force,

620
00:29:09,880 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 10: and that got theorists very, very excited, and there was

621
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:14,640
Speaker 10: a lot of theoretical work pursuing this, and then a

622
00:29:14,680 --> 00:29:16,840
Speaker 10: lot of experimental work. So I kind of came into

623
00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:18,960
Speaker 10: this area, I suppose about a year after this picture

624
00:29:19,000 --> 00:29:22,360
Speaker 10: started to emerge in twenty fifteen, and spent several years

625
00:29:22,400 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 10: of my career making other measurements that might give us

626
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:26,720
Speaker 10: some more clues as to what was going on. So

627
00:29:26,760 --> 00:29:28,840
Speaker 10: that was really how I got interested in the whole

628
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 10: subject of anomalies and the way that anomalies can sometimes

629
00:29:32,400 --> 00:29:35,440
Speaker 10: lead us to a big breakthrough in our understanding of

630
00:29:35,480 --> 00:29:36,000
Speaker 10: the universe.

631
00:29:36,040 --> 00:29:38,040
Speaker 9: And that's what the book Space obviously is about.

632
00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 10: It's essentially about, you know, how anomalies shape physics and

633
00:29:40,880 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 10: cosmology through history, and focusing on five particularly big anomalies

634
00:29:44,800 --> 00:29:47,360
Speaker 10: that have been doing the rounds in physics and cosmology

635
00:29:47,360 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 10: in the last decade or so.

636
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 2: And when you're working on an anomaly at that when

637
00:29:50,640 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 2: you see something you don't understand tell us about what

638
00:29:54,040 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 2: that's like. I mean, you're on the forefront of knowledge.

639
00:29:56,840 --> 00:30:00,280
Speaker 2: You're like potentially standing, you know, one step away from

640
00:30:00,280 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 2: some big revolution in our understanding. When you were working

641
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:05,720
Speaker 2: on that, you have that sense of like this could

642
00:30:05,760 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 2: be historic. You know that we could be writing books

643
00:30:08,200 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 2: about these discoveries in twenty years. We could be telling

644
00:30:11,680 --> 00:30:13,480
Speaker 2: people about them, you know the way. I think like

645
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 2: we pour over Einstein's notebooks now and you know, sort

646
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,320
Speaker 2: of stand over his shoulder. I wonder for the people

647
00:30:19,400 --> 00:30:21,800
Speaker 2: making discoveries if they sort of like feel like the

648
00:30:21,800 --> 00:30:25,080
Speaker 2: ghosts of the future paying attention to the sandwich they

649
00:30:25,120 --> 00:30:29,560
Speaker 2: had that day in this Smithsonian. You know, like, was

650
00:30:29,600 --> 00:30:31,800
Speaker 2: there that moment of excitement for you when you're working

651
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:33,640
Speaker 2: on this and you didn't yet know how it came out?

652
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:36,120
Speaker 2: Because across the ring we were all very excited. We

653
00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:37,920
Speaker 2: were like waiting with bated breath to see if this

654
00:30:38,040 --> 00:30:38,400
Speaker 2: was real.

655
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 1: Yeah.

656
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 10: I mean, there were several moments that are really exciting.

657
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 10: There was one in Mark twenty twenty one when some

658
00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:45,400
Speaker 10: of my colleagues who are working on one of these

659
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:48,360
Speaker 10: anomalies updated their measurement with using all the data that

660
00:30:48,360 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 10: we'd recorded at LHCb up to that point, and I

661
00:30:51,480 --> 00:30:53,560
Speaker 10: wasn't directly involved in the analysis, but I was a

662
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:56,360
Speaker 10: sort of inside observer, I suppose watching this whole process,

663
00:30:56,400 --> 00:30:59,800
Speaker 10: and there was this really exciting moment where they what

664
00:30:59,840 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 10: you call unblinded their data. So this is common practice

665
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 10: in physics nowadays, which is that you perform your analysis

666
00:31:06,040 --> 00:31:07,840
Speaker 10: blind in the sense that you can't look at the

667
00:31:07,880 --> 00:31:11,800
Speaker 10: result until you've completely fixed your analysis procedure, you've done

668
00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:14,840
Speaker 10: all your systematic studies, basically all the remains in the paper.

669
00:31:14,920 --> 00:31:16,479
Speaker 10: Is essentially to put in the answer at the end,

670
00:31:16,520 --> 00:31:18,920
Speaker 10: and the idea of doing this is you prevent yourself

671
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:22,440
Speaker 10: from biasing yourself or massaging the results one way or another,

672
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:24,960
Speaker 10: subconsciously or consciously. As a result of this, you have

673
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 10: this moment where the result gets unscrambled and you see

674
00:31:27,480 --> 00:31:29,720
Speaker 10: for the first time, you know what is actually happening here.

675
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:33,720
Speaker 10: And when that result was revealed in March twenty one,

676
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:38,160
Speaker 10: this anomaly had grown beyond this slightly arbitrary threshold known

677
00:31:38,160 --> 00:31:41,920
Speaker 10: as three sigma, which is essentially where the experimental measurement

678
00:31:41,960 --> 00:31:45,880
Speaker 10: is more than three standard deviations or three uncertainties away

679
00:31:45,920 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 10: from your theory prediction and that is for some reason,

680
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 10: conventionally in physics regarded as evidence. So at this point

681
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 10: there's a sort of one in a few hundred chance

682
00:31:55,560 --> 00:31:58,120
Speaker 10: that this would be a sort of random statistical fluke.

683
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:01,440
Speaker 10: It starts to look more convince more compelling as a

684
00:32:01,680 --> 00:32:03,440
Speaker 10: real sign of new physics. So that was a really

685
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 10: exciting moment, and you had this sense particularly that period

686
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:09,560
Speaker 10: in early twenty one. You had this result from LHCb,

687
00:32:09,800 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 10: and then about a month later, another anomaly was confirmed

688
00:32:14,400 --> 00:32:17,480
Speaker 10: by an experiment at Fermilab who were looking at the

689
00:32:17,520 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 10: magnetism of a party called a muon, and that again

690
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:23,760
Speaker 10: sort of perhaps was interpreted as being evidence of some

691
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:26,280
Speaker 10: new force. So you had these kind of compiling results

692
00:32:26,280 --> 00:32:27,640
Speaker 10: that were sort of suggesting that we were on the

693
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 10: brink or something really exciting. And personally, I mean, my

694
00:32:30,560 --> 00:32:32,440
Speaker 10: moment came a little bit later, and you know, all

695
00:32:32,440 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 10: these measurements are sort of small contributions to an overall pitchure.

696
00:32:34,960 --> 00:32:36,600
Speaker 10: There isn't like one moment where you go, you know,

697
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:39,000
Speaker 10: we've discovered something. And while I was working on a

698
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:41,920
Speaker 10: set of measurements with a student, they were less sensitive

699
00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:44,880
Speaker 10: than the big one that came out in March, but Nonetheless,

700
00:32:44,880 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 10: it was sort of we had this moment where we're

701
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:48,120
Speaker 10: on This was during sort of COVID time, so we

702
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,920
Speaker 10: weren't together, we were on zoom. We unblinded our measurements,

703
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,720
Speaker 10: and again our measurements lined up with the anomalies that

704
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 10: everyone else had been seeing. So there was a real

705
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 10: sense then of like, wow, you know, maybe there's something

706
00:32:58,040 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 10: really going on here. So yeah, it was a very

707
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,200
Speaker 10: very exciting time, and you did feel like you were

708
00:33:02,760 --> 00:33:03,520
Speaker 10: in amongst a.

709
00:33:03,520 --> 00:33:06,400
Speaker 9: Process that could turn into something really big.

710
00:33:06,800 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is sort of like the joy and

711
00:33:08,840 --> 00:33:12,240
Speaker 2: the frustration of some of these precision measurements. Right, you're

712
00:33:12,280 --> 00:33:15,520
Speaker 2: looking for something weird, something different, something that's not predicted

713
00:33:15,520 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 2: by your theory, and you're sensitive to a whole broad

714
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:20,560
Speaker 2: range of stuff. But because you're sensitive to a whole

715
00:33:20,560 --> 00:33:23,120
Speaker 2: broad range of stuff, it could be anything, right. It

716
00:33:23,160 --> 00:33:25,320
Speaker 2: could be new particles, it could be new forces. It

717
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 2: could also be like, wow, your cable wasn't plugged in correctly,

718
00:33:29,160 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 2: And so that's you know, as you say in your book,

719
00:33:32,040 --> 00:33:35,400
Speaker 2: the unglamorous work of measuring some quantity or another to

720
00:33:35,520 --> 00:33:38,600
Speaker 2: increasing number of decimal places can seem like a nerdy obsession.

721
00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 2: But this is also the kind of work that can

722
00:33:40,960 --> 00:33:42,760
Speaker 2: really lead to exciting discoveries.

723
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:45,040
Speaker 9: Yeah, it can, but you always have to be really careful.

724
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,200
Speaker 10: And I think more often than not, when you get

725
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:50,120
Speaker 10: an anomaly like this, I mean, there's usually sort of

726
00:33:50,160 --> 00:33:52,960
Speaker 10: boring explanations for an anomaly. It's usually that it's a

727
00:33:52,960 --> 00:33:56,880
Speaker 10: statistical wobble, you know, just basically bad luck in the data.

728
00:33:56,920 --> 00:34:00,000
Speaker 10: And we saw that the LHC about ten years ago

729
00:34:00,080 --> 00:34:03,240
Speaker 10: when there was this famous bump that was seen about

730
00:34:03,240 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 10: both ATLAS and CMS, so people interpreted as evidence for

731
00:34:06,080 --> 00:34:08,160
Speaker 10: some new particle outside the standard model.

732
00:34:08,200 --> 00:34:09,960
Speaker 9: And it was this crazy period.

733
00:34:10,000 --> 00:34:12,320
Speaker 10: I think it was announced just before Christmas twenty fifteen,

734
00:34:12,440 --> 00:34:15,760
Speaker 10: and by Christmas there were already something like two hundred

735
00:34:15,840 --> 00:34:18,160
Speaker 10: papers that had been published by theorists trying to explain

736
00:34:18,200 --> 00:34:20,719
Speaker 10: what this little bump in a graph was. And lo

737
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,600
Speaker 10: and behold, you know, six months later, when more data

738
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:26,400
Speaker 10: was added, this bump just had melted away and it

739
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:28,759
Speaker 10: was just basically neither experiment done anything wrong. It was

740
00:34:28,800 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 10: just a statistical wobble. And these things come and go,

741
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 10: So that's one explanation. Sometimes it's as you say, it's

742
00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:35,319
Speaker 10: a cable that's not plugged in properly, so some kind

743
00:34:35,320 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 10: of experimental mistake that you just didn't realize was there.

744
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 10: And sometimes actually it's also the theoretical prediction may not

745
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:45,880
Speaker 10: be totally solid, and this is maybe a sort of

746
00:34:45,880 --> 00:34:47,320
Speaker 10: idea that's hard to get your head around because you

747
00:34:47,400 --> 00:34:48,759
Speaker 10: kind of think, well, if you have a theory, surely

748
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:51,000
Speaker 10: you can just work out what the consequences of it are.

749
00:34:51,080 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 9: But that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes it's particularly.

750
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:57,080
Speaker 10: In particle physics when you're dealing with the theory of

751
00:34:57,120 --> 00:34:59,759
Speaker 10: quarks and gluons, particularly, which are very important at the

752
00:34:59,840 --> 00:35:02,960
Speaker 10: life Chadron collider. Those kinds of effects are very hard

753
00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:04,960
Speaker 10: to calculate, so you might have a prediction for what

754
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:06,880
Speaker 10: you expect to see, but that prediction comes with its

755
00:35:06,880 --> 00:35:09,680
Speaker 10: own set of uncertainties and assumptions that could bias it.

756
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:11,759
Speaker 10: So you kind of have to eliminate all three of

757
00:35:11,760 --> 00:35:15,120
Speaker 10: those possibilities before you can say, well, this is really

758
00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:17,800
Speaker 10: the sign of something genuinely new.

759
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:20,759
Speaker 2: All right, So finding oddities in our data is a

760
00:35:20,760 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 2: good way to make discoveries and also maybe just to

761
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:26,800
Speaker 2: find our own mistakes. And in the book you highlight

762
00:35:26,840 --> 00:35:28,439
Speaker 2: a few of them. Let's dig into the first one.

763
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 2: Which has to do with one of my favorite and

764
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:35,880
Speaker 2: craziest experiments, a balloon experiment looking for stuff from space.

765
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:38,160
Speaker 2: Tell us about the ANITA experiment in what it's are.

766
00:35:38,480 --> 00:35:41,080
Speaker 10: So ANITA is a really cool experiment. Essentially, what it is,

767
00:35:41,120 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 10: it's this giant radio antenna. So it looks a bit

768
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:48,920
Speaker 10: like a huge tannoid system with all these white, gleaming

769
00:35:49,040 --> 00:35:51,960
Speaker 10: horns that stick off it, and it's launched into the

770
00:35:52,000 --> 00:35:55,000
Speaker 10: Antarctic stratosphere on a huge NASA balloon. So this is

771
00:35:55,040 --> 00:35:59,240
Speaker 10: this incredible thing which is made of gossamer thin polyethylene

772
00:35:59,520 --> 00:36:01,919
Speaker 10: filled with helium, and when it gets up to its

773
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:04,200
Speaker 10: full altitude up in the stratosphere, it's the size of

774
00:36:04,239 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 10: a football stadium. So this vast kind of you know,

775
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:10,040
Speaker 10: translucent orb underneath which hangs on a little cable this

776
00:36:10,680 --> 00:36:15,239
Speaker 10: radio antenna, And what ANITA is looking for is radio signals.

777
00:36:14,719 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 9: Coming out from the Antarctic ice sheet.

778
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 10: And essentially the reason they're doing this is they're using

779
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 10: Antarctica effectively as a giant detector. They're looking for. Particularly,

780
00:36:23,880 --> 00:36:26,640
Speaker 10: ANITA is looking for high energy neutrinos. So these are

781
00:36:26,760 --> 00:36:30,279
Speaker 10: neutrinos that are produced by really violent, extreme objects out

782
00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:32,920
Speaker 10: there in the distant parts of the cosmos, they come in,

783
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 10: they hit the Antarctic ice, and when they hit the

784
00:36:35,560 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 10: ice they convert into electric charged particles. That creates a

785
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 10: wave of radio signal that comes up out of the ice.

786
00:36:42,960 --> 00:36:46,080
Speaker 10: And then by detecting these radio blasts, you can then

787
00:36:46,239 --> 00:36:49,799
Speaker 10: essentially infer how energetic this neutrino was and sometimes also

788
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,279
Speaker 10: what direction it came from. So essentially as a wave

789
00:36:52,280 --> 00:36:55,680
Speaker 10: of looking for these really really high engeneutrinos using Antarctica

790
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:57,040
Speaker 10: as a giant detector.

791
00:36:57,360 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 2: I love the ingenuity of these experiments. So like we

792
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:01,840
Speaker 2: need a mile cube of ice. You can't build that,

793
00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 2: but let's just go like find it out there and

794
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:05,759
Speaker 2: take advantage of it. To me, this is like part

795
00:37:05,800 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 2: of the real, you know, experimental cleverness of this field. People.

796
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,799
Speaker 2: Sometimes I think imagine that the theorists are the only

797
00:37:11,840 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 2: ones being creative, but you know, it takes real creativity

798
00:37:15,719 --> 00:37:18,440
Speaker 2: and ingenuity to come up with these ways to force

799
00:37:18,480 --> 00:37:21,359
Speaker 2: the universe to reveal something to you. I love these experiments,

800
00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:24,720
Speaker 2: and I'm also terrified and in awe of people who

801
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:27,360
Speaker 2: build their detector and then send it up on a

802
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:30,640
Speaker 2: balloon hoping that it works. And it comes back and

803
00:37:30,640 --> 00:37:33,160
Speaker 2: they get data from it, like, oh my gosh, how terrifying.

804
00:37:33,239 --> 00:37:34,759
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean I spoke to the scientists who work

805
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 10: on ANITA, and you know, the environment they're working out

806
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:39,640
Speaker 10: there in Antarctica is also really strange. There at this

807
00:37:39,640 --> 00:37:43,040
Speaker 10: place called McMurdo, which is a US research based on

808
00:37:43,040 --> 00:37:44,839
Speaker 10: the edge of the Antarctic constant, just on the edge

809
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 10: of the ice sheet, and they're.

810
00:37:46,200 --> 00:37:47,920
Speaker 9: Working in these pretty difficult conditions.

811
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,600
Speaker 10: You're out there at the balloon station in very low temperatures,

812
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:54,359
Speaker 10: working in this hangar, and then there's this moment where

813
00:37:54,400 --> 00:37:57,359
Speaker 10: you take your instrument out onto the ice and it's

814
00:37:57,400 --> 00:37:59,879
Speaker 10: attached the balloon and you're kind of watching with bated breath.

815
00:37:59,880 --> 00:38:01,120
Speaker 9: Is it all going to go off? Is it going

816
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:01,719
Speaker 9: to switch on?

817
00:38:01,760 --> 00:38:03,799
Speaker 10: In these very low temperatures, Like there's always a danger

818
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:05,319
Speaker 10: that your computer just doesn't boot up.

819
00:38:05,760 --> 00:38:07,160
Speaker 9: And then this thing's launched into the air.

820
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:10,400
Speaker 10: And then they describe watching this sort of radio antenna

821
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:12,880
Speaker 10: getting small and small and disappearing, and they're sort of

822
00:38:12,960 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 10: vanishing into the distance and communicating with it while it

823
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:17,200
Speaker 10: was still within line of sight to check it it's

824
00:38:17,200 --> 00:38:19,000
Speaker 10: all working. So you're out there in this environment for

825
00:38:19,040 --> 00:38:20,839
Speaker 10: a whole month, so you're readeddicating. It's not a job

826
00:38:20,840 --> 00:38:22,160
Speaker 10: where you just go to the office and come home.

827
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:25,080
Speaker 10: You're really like immersed in this place for a long

828
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:27,200
Speaker 10: period of time, and you're away from your friends and family.

829
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:29,360
Speaker 10: So it's also I think the length that people go

830
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 10: to to find out about the universe is really impressive.

831
00:38:32,239 --> 00:38:34,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, every tiny little piece of knowledge you read about

832
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:37,280
Speaker 2: on your phone for like four seconds, it's like somebody

833
00:38:37,280 --> 00:38:41,080
Speaker 2: dedicating their life to figuring out like why spiders, you know,

834
00:38:41,160 --> 00:38:43,399
Speaker 2: live in these little nests in the ringforest, or how

835
00:38:43,480 --> 00:38:45,960
Speaker 2: high energy neutrinos make it through the ice. So in

836
00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 2: this case, Anita is looking, you're saying, for super high

837
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 2: energy neutrinos hitting the ice and then the radio waves

838
00:38:51,600 --> 00:38:55,040
Speaker 2: bouncing back up into the atmosphere for us to record.

839
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:57,720
Speaker 2: And so what did they see that was weird?

840
00:38:57,960 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 10: So they didn't see the neutrinos they were hoping to see,

841
00:39:00,880 --> 00:39:04,880
Speaker 10: but what they did see were high energy cosmic rays.

842
00:39:04,880 --> 00:39:09,120
Speaker 10: So these are essentially electrically charged particles like protons or

843
00:39:09,120 --> 00:39:11,520
Speaker 10: heavy nuclei that come in and hit the ice and

844
00:39:11,560 --> 00:39:14,239
Speaker 10: they will also produce these sort of radio signals. But

845
00:39:14,280 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 10: what was weird was that in amongst all the cosmic

846
00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:19,920
Speaker 10: rays signals that they saw, they saw too that appeared

847
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:21,760
Speaker 10: to have come from below.

848
00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:23,560
Speaker 9: In other words, these looked.

849
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:26,399
Speaker 10: Like particles that had come from underneath the Antarctic ice

850
00:39:26,400 --> 00:39:30,160
Speaker 10: sheet and burst up into the atmosphere. And such a

851
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 10: thing should not be possible because when you have very

852
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 10: high energy particles, they would only be able to travel

853
00:39:36,120 --> 00:39:38,720
Speaker 10: a very short distance through the Earth before being absorbed

854
00:39:38,719 --> 00:39:40,800
Speaker 10: by the rock at the solid interior of the Earth.

855
00:39:40,840 --> 00:39:43,360
Speaker 10: So essentially, they had these two events where you had

856
00:39:43,400 --> 00:39:45,880
Speaker 10: these upward going very high energy particles, and there was

857
00:39:45,920 --> 00:39:49,319
Speaker 10: no particle that we know about that could produce such

858
00:39:49,320 --> 00:39:49,960
Speaker 10: an effect.

859
00:39:50,120 --> 00:39:52,360
Speaker 2: Why couldn't it be a neutrino. We're always hearing that

860
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:55,520
Speaker 2: neutrinos can pass through a light year of lead without issue.

861
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 2: Why can't they pass through the Earth and then interact

862
00:39:57,680 --> 00:39:57,920
Speaker 2: in the.

863
00:39:57,880 --> 00:40:01,120
Speaker 10: Ice Basically because neutrinios are very weak interacting and the

864
00:40:01,120 --> 00:40:03,560
Speaker 10: reason for that is they only interact with ordinary matter

865
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:06,279
Speaker 10: through the weak force. Now, the reason the weak force

866
00:40:06,360 --> 00:40:10,680
Speaker 10: is weak is because the particle that communicates the weak force,

867
00:40:10,680 --> 00:40:12,640
Speaker 10: which is the well the w and the z bosons,

868
00:40:13,040 --> 00:40:15,280
Speaker 10: they're very heavy, so they have a mass of between

869
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 10: eighty and ninety gv, so that's sort of about one

870
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 10: hundred times the mass of the proton. So they're very

871
00:40:19,640 --> 00:40:23,120
Speaker 10: heavy particles, and as a result, essentially the heaviness of

872
00:40:23,160 --> 00:40:25,719
Speaker 10: those particles is what makes the weak force weak, because

873
00:40:25,719 --> 00:40:28,880
Speaker 10: it's impossible for a low engineutray to actually create a

874
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 10: real what we call a real Worz boson. Instead, it

875
00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:33,920
Speaker 10: has to sort of basically send a little bit of

876
00:40:34,040 --> 00:40:36,359
Speaker 10: energy through the W and z fields, but it's off

877
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:38,480
Speaker 10: resonance and it's all a bit of a mess, and

878
00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 10: so as a result, that force is very short ranged

879
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:43,200
Speaker 10: and very weak. But when you have a really high

880
00:40:43,280 --> 00:40:45,799
Speaker 10: energy nutrino of the type that Anita is looking for,

881
00:40:46,040 --> 00:40:48,520
Speaker 10: these are so energetic. When they collide with stuff in

882
00:40:48,560 --> 00:40:51,480
Speaker 10: the physical material of the Earth, they can create a

883
00:40:51,520 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 10: real w and Z boson. They have enough energy to

884
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:56,680
Speaker 10: make a real particle. So the weak force stops being

885
00:40:56,719 --> 00:40:59,360
Speaker 10: weak and it becomes strong. For a low energinetry in

886
00:40:59,400 --> 00:41:01,840
Speaker 10: the Earth is like transparent thing which they just go

887
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,920
Speaker 10: straight through. For heinagineutrino, though, it's a solid object and

888
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,040
Speaker 10: they can't get through it. So not even a neutrino

889
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:10,200
Speaker 10: could explain this kind of weird signal that Anita had

890
00:41:10,200 --> 00:41:10,720
Speaker 10: been seeing.

891
00:41:12,080 --> 00:41:14,600
Speaker 2: So we saw these weird signals that look like they're

892
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 2: coming through the earth. What could these things be?

893
00:41:17,920 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 10: You get an anomally like this, and then theorists go

894
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 10: to town and they come up with all kinds of explanations.

895
00:41:22,000 --> 00:41:24,799
Speaker 10: There were various ideas that went around. One was that

896
00:41:24,840 --> 00:41:28,239
Speaker 10: this was an exotic type of neutrinos, something called a

897
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:32,040
Speaker 10: sterile neutrino. So steril neutrinos appear in quite a lot

898
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 10: of extensions of the standard model. They're essentially even more

899
00:41:35,719 --> 00:41:38,919
Speaker 10: antisocial neutrinos, So the neutrinos that don't even interact through

900
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,399
Speaker 10: the weak fource, so they're essentially totally decoupled from ordinary matter.

901
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:45,920
Speaker 10: The only way they can interact is gravitationally. But in

902
00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 10: some theories, these steril neutrinos can mix with the ordinary neutrinos.

903
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:51,880
Speaker 10: So essentially what happens is you imagine one of these

904
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,120
Speaker 10: steril neutrinos that goes through the Earth with lots of energy,

905
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 10: but because it's a sterilic can just go straight through

906
00:41:56,120 --> 00:41:58,200
Speaker 10: the Earth. That's fine, and then just by chance, when

907
00:41:58,200 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 10: it gets close to the surface, it oscillates and converts

908
00:42:01,760 --> 00:42:04,920
Speaker 10: into a normal neutrino, and then suddenly it sees the

909
00:42:04,960 --> 00:42:07,520
Speaker 10: ice and it crashes into it creates this radio burst.

910
00:42:07,600 --> 00:42:09,080
Speaker 10: So it sort of gets through the Earth kind of

911
00:42:09,160 --> 00:42:11,719
Speaker 10: disguised in this invisible form and then turns into something

912
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 10: visible just as by luck when it gets to the surface.

913
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:18,200
Speaker 10: So that was one possibility. Another possibility is that was

914
00:42:18,280 --> 00:42:22,120
Speaker 10: some sort of supersymmetric particle traveling through the Earth. Other

915
00:42:22,200 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 10: ideas that there was dark matter that was accumulating inside

916
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:28,560
Speaker 10: the Earth and annihilating and producing various exotic particles. One

917
00:42:28,560 --> 00:42:32,560
Speaker 10: of the most crazy ideas, well crazy sounding, was this

918
00:42:32,600 --> 00:42:36,759
Speaker 10: there was actually evidence of a universe made of antimatter

919
00:42:36,840 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 10: where time goes backwards, which comes from a theory there

920
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,840
Speaker 10: was an attempt to sort of solve various cosmological problems,

921
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 10: essentially to do with the Big Bang, where at the

922
00:42:46,080 --> 00:42:48,760
Speaker 10: Big Bang there's two universes produced, one made of matter

923
00:42:49,040 --> 00:42:50,920
Speaker 10: which goes forward in time, and one made of antimatter

924
00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:53,120
Speaker 10: that goes backward in time. So I mean, all kinds

925
00:42:53,120 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 10: of explanations for these things. There's also the mundane explanation.

926
00:42:56,040 --> 00:42:59,279
Speaker 10: So one group of theorists suggested that actually, maybe what

927
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 10: you're seeing here is not new physics, but effectively ice

928
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,279
Speaker 10: formations that are interfering with your measurements.

929
00:43:07,320 --> 00:43:08,680
Speaker 9: So the way you.

930
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 10: Tell the direction the particles come in is essentially you

931
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:13,200
Speaker 10: get this radio burst that it's like a kind of

932
00:43:13,239 --> 00:43:15,880
Speaker 10: wiggly line on a celloscope. It looks a bit like that,

933
00:43:16,080 --> 00:43:19,200
Speaker 10: and from the phase of that signal, so whether it

934
00:43:19,280 --> 00:43:21,439
Speaker 10: kind of goes up then down or it goes down

935
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,279
Speaker 10: then up, you can tell whether it came directly from

936
00:43:24,280 --> 00:43:27,480
Speaker 10: the ice or whether it was reflected. So the particles

937
00:43:27,520 --> 00:43:30,520
Speaker 10: that come from above, their radio signals are reflected back up.

938
00:43:30,600 --> 00:43:33,799
Speaker 10: The ones from below they have this unreflected profile. But

939
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:36,719
Speaker 10: people suggested, well, maybe there are these subsurface features in

940
00:43:36,760 --> 00:43:39,719
Speaker 10: the ice, so like subglacial lakes or layers of compacted

941
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:42,959
Speaker 10: snow that could create multiple reflections that would make something

942
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 10: look like it came from below, when actually it had

943
00:43:45,239 --> 00:43:46,840
Speaker 10: some kind of complicated bouncing around in.

944
00:43:46,800 --> 00:43:48,280
Speaker 9: The ice before it came back up again.

945
00:43:48,760 --> 00:43:50,319
Speaker 10: So they proposed, well, what we actually need to do

946
00:43:50,400 --> 00:43:53,800
Speaker 10: is a survey of Antarctica and look for new sub

947
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:55,800
Speaker 10: ice features that could explain this signal.

948
00:43:55,840 --> 00:43:57,400
Speaker 9: Now, the experiment said, well.

949
00:43:57,280 --> 00:43:59,959
Speaker 10: Actually, where we saw these two events, there's no evident

950
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 10: for interesting features underneath the ice, So we don't think

951
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:06,080
Speaker 10: that's an explanation. So we don't know whether it's exciting

952
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:08,480
Speaker 10: new physics or whether it is just something to do

953
00:44:08,520 --> 00:44:08,879
Speaker 10: with ice.

954
00:44:09,120 --> 00:44:11,120
Speaker 2: And so help us understand why it's so hard to

955
00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 2: tell these various explanations apart. I mean they sound like

956
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:17,200
Speaker 2: totally different stories about what's happening. Is it just because

957
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 2: we have such limited information. We don't have like the

958
00:44:19,600 --> 00:44:22,120
Speaker 2: ice completely instrumented, We don't have like a picture of

959
00:44:22,160 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 2: this interaction. I think people are probably used to imagining

960
00:44:25,560 --> 00:44:29,439
Speaker 2: their minds particle experiments leading to these spectacular traces where

961
00:44:29,440 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 2: you have all these particles you can sort of see

962
00:44:31,280 --> 00:44:34,719
Speaker 2: what happened. Or do we have just less information about this?

963
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 2: Why can't we look at this and say, oh, here's

964
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:38,920
Speaker 2: what it is and here's what it isn't.

965
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 10: Well, I mean essentially, all that Anita sees is this

966
00:44:41,600 --> 00:44:44,560
Speaker 10: radio signal. It's essentially hearing this radio chairup with a

967
00:44:44,560 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 10: particular profile, and you have to then work out what

968
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:49,799
Speaker 10: you've seen based on that, and there are various bits

969
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 10: of information. You know the shape of the profile, whether

970
00:44:52,080 --> 00:44:54,839
Speaker 10: it's inverted or not inverted, that tells you whether it's

971
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 10: reflected or not reflected. But you don't have any other information,

972
00:44:57,520 --> 00:44:59,319
Speaker 10: so you don't have a track, you don't have you know,

973
00:44:59,360 --> 00:45:01,879
Speaker 10: images of part article interactions. You're really just going off

974
00:45:02,239 --> 00:45:05,600
Speaker 10: a relatively small amount of information, and there's many ways

975
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:08,640
Speaker 10: that you can produce that signal that you know. In

976
00:45:08,760 --> 00:45:11,600
Speaker 10: terms of all the new physics explanations, ultimately what they

977
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:14,360
Speaker 10: boil down to is, at some point in charge particle

978
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,239
Speaker 10: gets produced that interacts with the ice. So actually, whether

979
00:45:17,280 --> 00:45:19,960
Speaker 10: it's a steril neutrino, whether it's dark matter, whether it's

980
00:45:19,960 --> 00:45:22,560
Speaker 10: an anti matter universe, they would all basically look the same.

981
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:23,719
Speaker 9: You wouldn't be able to turn the part.

982
00:45:23,760 --> 00:45:26,200
Speaker 10: You would then need other experiments to go out and

983
00:45:26,200 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 10: look for Well, okay, if it's the sterei on neutrino,

984
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 10: we would expect to see this in other places, so

985
00:45:30,040 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 10: let's go and look for it there.

986
00:45:31,160 --> 00:45:32,920
Speaker 9: So this would only be one clue.

987
00:45:32,920 --> 00:45:35,520
Speaker 10: It's like you've seen, you know, one footprint in the

988
00:45:35,600 --> 00:45:37,480
Speaker 10: mud in the jungle when you're hunting for an animal.

989
00:45:37,520 --> 00:45:40,600
Speaker 10: You don't necessarily know what animal it came from just

990
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:42,560
Speaker 10: from this one depression in the soul. You've got to

991
00:45:42,560 --> 00:45:44,400
Speaker 10: get more evidence. So it would be a clue, but

992
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:46,680
Speaker 10: not convincing or not. It wouldn't tell you ultimately what

993
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:47,160
Speaker 10: caused it.

994
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:49,799
Speaker 2: Necessarily, personally, I find it kind of frustrating that we're

995
00:45:49,800 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 2: doing particle physics in an era where a single observation

996
00:45:53,200 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 2: can't make a discoveries. You say, it's like seeing a

997
00:45:55,480 --> 00:45:57,359
Speaker 2: footprint or a tuft of hair or something you haven't

998
00:45:57,440 --> 00:46:00,759
Speaker 2: like identified the actual animal. And I think back on

999
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:03,560
Speaker 2: in the days, you know, like when the positron was discovered,

1000
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:06,680
Speaker 2: or you know, a cosmic rays or you know, the

1001
00:46:06,719 --> 00:46:09,400
Speaker 2: neutral current or whatever, where they saw something weird in

1002
00:46:09,440 --> 00:46:11,839
Speaker 2: their data and it was obvious that it was something new,

1003
00:46:11,880 --> 00:46:14,840
Speaker 2: that there was no other explanation other than a new particle.

1004
00:46:15,400 --> 00:46:17,640
Speaker 2: Why can't we do that anymore? Are we just passed

1005
00:46:17,640 --> 00:46:20,319
Speaker 2: the days of single event discovery because our experiments are

1006
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 2: so complex and our data are so indirect or do

1007
00:46:23,440 --> 00:46:24,799
Speaker 2: you think that's still something we could do?

1008
00:46:25,080 --> 00:46:26,760
Speaker 10: I mean, if you go back to the positron discovery,

1009
00:46:26,760 --> 00:46:28,799
Speaker 10: that's a great story because you know, you have Carl

1010
00:46:28,840 --> 00:46:31,879
Speaker 10: Anderson with his cloud chamber and he sees this one

1011
00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:34,239
Speaker 10: track going through his cloud chamber which is.

1012
00:46:34,200 --> 00:46:35,280
Speaker 9: Bending the wrong ways.

1013
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:38,080
Speaker 10: You know, it looks like a positively charged electron. And

1014
00:46:38,120 --> 00:46:40,120
Speaker 10: on the basis of this one photograph that he's taken

1015
00:46:40,160 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 10: of one track he discovers antimatter.

1016
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:45,840
Speaker 2: One day's experiment, one photograph, one Nobel price. It's a

1017
00:46:45,840 --> 00:46:46,520
Speaker 2: great ratio.

1018
00:46:48,080 --> 00:46:50,040
Speaker 10: I suspect he probably did a few more days experimenting

1019
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:50,960
Speaker 10: than just the one photo.

1020
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:53,160
Speaker 9: But yeah, I mean relatively speaking.

1021
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 10: But I think the reason that was accepted quite quickly

1022
00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 10: is because it was expected. Durrak had predicted the existence

1023
00:47:00,480 --> 00:47:03,520
Speaker 10: of the positron based on theory, so people were primed

1024
00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 10: to see this thing. So I think that's partly why

1025
00:47:06,520 --> 00:47:09,360
Speaker 10: it was accepted. But also, you know, with this one image,

1026
00:47:09,360 --> 00:47:11,040
Speaker 10: there was no other way of explaining this. How do

1027
00:47:11,080 --> 00:47:13,400
Speaker 10: you get a positively charged track that looks like an electron, Well,

1028
00:47:13,400 --> 00:47:15,520
Speaker 10: there's nothing that can do that, and he had ways

1029
00:47:15,560 --> 00:47:17,800
Speaker 10: of knowing that it wasn't electron going the opposite direction,

1030
00:47:17,880 --> 00:47:20,600
Speaker 10: for example, are tricking you. So when there are no

1031
00:47:20,680 --> 00:47:22,919
Speaker 10: other explanations, I think you can make a discovery based

1032
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:25,240
Speaker 10: on a single measurement. So often though, I think nowadays

1033
00:47:25,239 --> 00:47:28,400
Speaker 10: in particle physics we're looking for really subtle effects, and

1034
00:47:28,440 --> 00:47:30,840
Speaker 10: you're often talking about if we go back to the

1035
00:47:30,920 --> 00:47:34,120
Speaker 10: LHC and the beauty quark anomalies. You're measuring some quantity

1036
00:47:34,160 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 10: to end decimal places and trying to compare it with

1037
00:47:36,239 --> 00:47:39,799
Speaker 10: your theory, and that measurement is kind of fraught with

1038
00:47:39,840 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 10: all kinds of potential systematic effects that you have to

1039
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:44,120
Speaker 10: take into account. It's so rare that you just have

1040
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:46,080
Speaker 10: this kind of thing that appears and it's, oh my god,

1041
00:47:46,120 --> 00:47:47,720
Speaker 10: you know that must be a new particle.

1042
00:47:47,760 --> 00:47:48,360
Speaker 9: I suppose you know.

1043
00:47:48,400 --> 00:47:51,480
Speaker 10: The closest became recently was the discovery of the Higgs boson,

1044
00:47:51,920 --> 00:47:55,120
Speaker 10: but that's still required two years of data taking and

1045
00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:56,879
Speaker 10: then you see a bump. But at that point when

1046
00:47:56,880 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 10: you saw the bump again, because the Higgs was expected,

1047
00:47:59,640 --> 00:48:02,160
Speaker 10: people are pretty ready to say, okay, even at the

1048
00:48:02,160 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 10: time they didn't say, this is a Higgs boson, but

1049
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:06,319
Speaker 10: you know it's a Higgs like particle, and you know,

1050
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:07,680
Speaker 10: gradually build more evidence.

1051
00:48:07,719 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 2: But even in that case, there's no event you can

1052
00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:11,799
Speaker 2: look at and say, okay, this proves to me there's

1053
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:14,279
Speaker 2: the Higgs. Each one like could be Higgs or could

1054
00:48:14,280 --> 00:48:16,200
Speaker 2: be background. They're all sitting on top of a huge

1055
00:48:16,200 --> 00:48:18,839
Speaker 2: background spectrum, and so in the end it's all statistical

1056
00:48:19,000 --> 00:48:22,239
Speaker 2: and indirect, right, there's no like, hey, look we found it,

1057
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:25,680
Speaker 2: let's buy our ticket to Sweden, which is frustrating, but

1058
00:48:25,719 --> 00:48:27,799
Speaker 2: you know, it also gives us power to discover all

1059
00:48:27,800 --> 00:48:29,080
Speaker 2: sorts of other stuff. I suppose.

1060
00:48:29,120 --> 00:48:33,000
Speaker 10: Actually the counterexample thinking about it is gravitational wave discovery

1061
00:48:33,080 --> 00:48:34,000
Speaker 10: in twenty fifteen.

1062
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:35,200
Speaker 9: So that was one event.

1063
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:38,680
Speaker 10: Albeit they had to extract it from you know, their data,

1064
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:40,840
Speaker 10: using these the template techniques and all the rest of it,

1065
00:48:40,920 --> 00:48:43,319
Speaker 10: but that was one signal, and they were prepared to

1066
00:48:43,320 --> 00:48:46,080
Speaker 10: say we've discovered gravitational waves on the basis of one interaction.

1067
00:48:46,160 --> 00:48:49,319
Speaker 10: That wasn't sort of you know, having to sample vast

1068
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:51,080
Speaker 10: numbers of you know things.

1069
00:48:51,360 --> 00:48:54,560
Speaker 9: It does still happen, all right, But again I guess that.

1070
00:48:54,120 --> 00:48:56,400
Speaker 10: That's helped by the fact that, again, you expected to

1071
00:48:56,400 --> 00:48:58,440
Speaker 10: see that, so you kind of knew what you should see,

1072
00:48:58,440 --> 00:48:59,400
Speaker 10: and you then you see the thing you.

1073
00:48:59,400 --> 00:49:01,680
Speaker 9: Expect and you oh, yes, okay, that's what that is.

1074
00:49:01,719 --> 00:49:02,880
Speaker 9: That's gravitational waves.

1075
00:49:03,239 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 2: All right. Well, that's really exciting, and I hope that

1076
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:07,520
Speaker 2: what they have found in the ice in Antarctica is

1077
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:10,279
Speaker 2: something new and weird and not just new layers of

1078
00:49:10,320 --> 00:49:13,279
Speaker 2: ice down there in Antarctica. I want to dig into

1079
00:49:13,280 --> 00:49:15,000
Speaker 2: some more of these anomalies. But first we have to

1080
00:49:15,040 --> 00:49:30,040
Speaker 2: take a quick break. Okay, we're back and I'm talking

1081
00:49:30,040 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 2: to doctor Harry Cliff about his fun new books Space Oddities,

1082
00:49:33,400 --> 00:49:35,400
Speaker 2: which tells us all about weird things that we are

1083
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:38,399
Speaker 2: seeing in particle physics experiments that could be the hint

1084
00:49:38,600 --> 00:49:41,840
Speaker 2: of something new. Tell us about the muon G minus

1085
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:43,560
Speaker 2: two experiment and what they are seeing.

1086
00:49:44,040 --> 00:49:46,719
Speaker 9: So yeah, muon G minus two is a very impressive experiment.

1087
00:49:46,760 --> 00:49:50,200
Speaker 10: So essentially what they're trying to measure is how magnetic

1088
00:49:50,800 --> 00:49:52,960
Speaker 10: an exotic particle called a muon is.

1089
00:49:53,360 --> 00:49:56,200
Speaker 9: So muon is essentially a heavy version of the electron.

1090
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,520
Speaker 10: It's got a negative charge, it's about two hundred times

1091
00:49:59,560 --> 00:50:01,960
Speaker 10: more mass than an electron, and they're quite unstable. They

1092
00:50:02,000 --> 00:50:03,560
Speaker 10: only live for a millionth of a second or so

1093
00:50:03,640 --> 00:50:07,640
Speaker 10: before they decay into neutrinos and an electron usually. Now,

1094
00:50:08,040 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 10: the reason that measuring the magnetism of the mue is

1095
00:50:10,640 --> 00:50:15,520
Speaker 10: interesting is that it's sensitive to the existence of new

1096
00:50:15,680 --> 00:50:19,560
Speaker 10: quantum fields in the vacuum that we haven't seen before.

1097
00:50:19,640 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 10: So to sort of introduce that ode of a quantum

1098
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:24,560
Speaker 10: field for people who aren't familiar in particle physics, actually

1099
00:50:24,600 --> 00:50:27,400
Speaker 10: we don't think of particles as being the fundamental ingredients

1100
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,080
Speaker 10: of the universe. We actually think of particles as being

1101
00:50:30,520 --> 00:50:34,320
Speaker 10: manifestations of something more fundamental, which are these quantum fields

1102
00:50:34,320 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 10: that permeate all of space. So, for example, like an electron,

1103
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 10: we actually think of an electron as a little vibration

1104
00:50:40,480 --> 00:50:43,400
Speaker 10: in something called the electron field that fills the whole universe.

1105
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:45,960
Speaker 10: And that means that if you take a little bit

1106
00:50:46,000 --> 00:50:48,120
Speaker 10: of empty space and you know, you look at it

1107
00:50:48,160 --> 00:50:49,320
Speaker 10: really hard, what you see.

1108
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:51,160
Speaker 9: Is actually is not empty. Even when you get rid

1109
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:52,080
Speaker 9: of all the particles.

1110
00:50:52,080 --> 00:50:54,400
Speaker 10: There are these fields that are still there, and we

1111
00:50:54,440 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 10: know about seventeen of.

1112
00:50:55,400 --> 00:50:56,040
Speaker 9: Them at the moment.

1113
00:50:56,040 --> 00:50:58,720
Speaker 10: There's you know, the quarks, the electons, the Higgs boson,

1114
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 10: and the force particles, glue on photons and so on.

1115
00:51:01,280 --> 00:51:04,399
Speaker 10: So these fields are always there, and there are certain

1116
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:09,319
Speaker 10: properties of particles that are particularly sensitive to what is

1117
00:51:09,400 --> 00:51:11,839
Speaker 10: sitting around them in the vacuum. So essentially, you think

1118
00:51:11,840 --> 00:51:14,000
Speaker 10: about a muon, you have your muon, it's sitting in

1119
00:51:14,040 --> 00:51:17,880
Speaker 10: the vacuum. It actually interacts with all these quantum fields

1120
00:51:17,920 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 10: that are sitting there all the time, and what you

1121
00:51:19,560 --> 00:51:22,319
Speaker 10: actually measure is not the magnetism of the muon. It's

1122
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:24,320
Speaker 10: on its own, but the magnetism of the muon plus

1123
00:51:24,360 --> 00:51:27,759
Speaker 10: all its interactions with these seventeen quantum fields, and they

1124
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:30,040
Speaker 10: can be really quite complicated, these sort of interactions back

1125
00:51:30,040 --> 00:51:31,120
Speaker 10: and forth between each other.

1126
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:33,040
Speaker 2: I think that's really helpful the way you're putting it.

1127
00:51:33,239 --> 00:51:36,680
Speaker 2: We're measuring these properties of the particles, but really they're

1128
00:51:36,719 --> 00:51:39,360
Speaker 2: showing us the interactions of the fields. Like even the

1129
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:42,200
Speaker 2: mass of the muon is that way right. The muon

1130
00:51:42,239 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 2: itself doesn't have a mass. It's the interaction of the

1131
00:51:45,120 --> 00:51:47,800
Speaker 2: muon and the Higgs field that changes how the muon

1132
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 2: field oscillates and the sort of standing waves of its vibrations,

1133
00:51:51,719 --> 00:51:53,480
Speaker 2: and we measure that as the mass of the muon, But

1134
00:51:53,520 --> 00:51:55,600
Speaker 2: it tells us about the Higgs field, And so you're saying,

1135
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:58,440
Speaker 2: measuring the magnetic moment of the muon also tells us

1136
00:51:58,480 --> 00:52:00,520
Speaker 2: about the other fields that could be out there. So

1137
00:52:00,520 --> 00:52:02,759
Speaker 2: it's a great example of this like indirect probe of

1138
00:52:02,760 --> 00:52:04,160
Speaker 2: all the stuff we might not know about.

1139
00:52:04,400 --> 00:52:05,480
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

1140
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:09,839
Speaker 10: And so the mun's magnetism was sort of measured back

1141
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:12,080
Speaker 10: in the nineties, but then in two thousand there was

1142
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:14,759
Speaker 10: an experiment at brook Haven near New York, where they

1143
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 10: measured the muon's magnetism and it came out three sigma

1144
00:52:17,840 --> 00:52:20,160
Speaker 10: away from the predictions of the Standard Model. So you

1145
00:52:20,280 --> 00:52:23,800
Speaker 10: had this tantalizing anomaly that was seemed to be evidence

1146
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:26,760
Speaker 10: that there was something else in the vacuum, something beyond

1147
00:52:26,800 --> 00:52:29,520
Speaker 10: the Standard Model that was altering its magnetism. So this

1148
00:52:29,560 --> 00:52:31,880
Speaker 10: could be the clue to something really new and exciting.

1149
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:34,759
Speaker 10: The problem was that the experiment shut down wasn't taking

1150
00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:36,880
Speaker 10: any more data. So how do you kind of resolve

1151
00:52:36,960 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 10: this mystery? Is it really new physics or is it

1152
00:52:39,640 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 10: something else or statistical effect, what have you. So some

1153
00:52:42,600 --> 00:52:45,040
Speaker 10: of the people who worked on that original Brookhaven experiment

1154
00:52:45,280 --> 00:52:47,759
Speaker 10: decided they were going to build a new and improved

1155
00:52:47,920 --> 00:52:50,719
Speaker 10: version of this muon G minus two experiment, and this

1156
00:52:50,800 --> 00:52:54,400
Speaker 10: involved essentially rebuilding the entire thing from scratch at Fermilab

1157
00:52:54,440 --> 00:52:55,120
Speaker 10: near Chicago.

1158
00:52:55,200 --> 00:52:57,000
Speaker 9: But I mean in terms of the lengths they go to.

1159
00:52:57,480 --> 00:52:59,799
Speaker 10: The only bit of the old experiment they recycled it

1160
00:52:59,880 --> 00:53:02,920
Speaker 10: was this superconducting magnetic ring. So essentially the way the

1161
00:53:02,920 --> 00:53:05,799
Speaker 10: experiment works is you fire muons into this magnetic ring.

1162
00:53:05,840 --> 00:53:08,080
Speaker 10: They go around the ring and as they go through

1163
00:53:08,080 --> 00:53:11,759
Speaker 10: this magnetic field, their magnetic moment processes, so it kind

1164
00:53:11,760 --> 00:53:15,240
Speaker 10: of wobbles about in the magnetic field. When the muons decay,

1165
00:53:15,440 --> 00:53:18,160
Speaker 10: you can essentially measure the speed of the wobble depending

1166
00:53:18,160 --> 00:53:20,160
Speaker 10: on how much energy the particles that are produced come

1167
00:53:20,160 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 10: out at You get this kind of wiggle plot essentially.

1168
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:24,920
Speaker 10: But this big ring, it's like, you know, thirty meters across,

1169
00:53:25,239 --> 00:53:27,160
Speaker 10: very expensive. They couldn't afford to get a new one

1170
00:53:27,160 --> 00:53:30,759
Speaker 10: from scratch. They had this whole thing shipped from Long

1171
00:53:30,760 --> 00:53:34,320
Speaker 10: Island down the Atlantic Coastline, round Florida, through Hurrican Alley,

1172
00:53:34,719 --> 00:53:37,439
Speaker 10: up the Mississippi River and then over then closed lags

1173
00:53:37,440 --> 00:53:40,000
Speaker 10: of freeways to get this huge thing to Fermilab. So

1174
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:43,920
Speaker 10: it's insane kind of like length that people go to. Again,

1175
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:47,680
Speaker 10: so this whole process took a decade. They bring the

1176
00:53:47,719 --> 00:53:49,920
Speaker 10: new ring to Fermi Lab, they install it, they rebuild

1177
00:53:49,920 --> 00:53:53,400
Speaker 10: the entire experiment from scratch, taking real incredible care to

1178
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:56,320
Speaker 10: measure every effect down to the sort of decimal place,

1179
00:53:56,640 --> 00:53:59,760
Speaker 10: characterize the magnetic feel beautifully. And then in twenty twenty

1180
00:53:59,760 --> 00:54:03,000
Speaker 10: one they announced their first measurement of the new magnetism

1181
00:54:03,040 --> 00:54:05,200
Speaker 10: there and again there's this dramatic moment where they unblind

1182
00:54:05,280 --> 00:54:07,759
Speaker 10: their results, and the big question is is this thing

1183
00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:10,680
Speaker 10: going to land on top of the old measurement and

1184
00:54:10,760 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 10: confirmed anomally or is it going to land on top

1185
00:54:12,680 --> 00:54:15,560
Speaker 10: of the theoretical prediction. And what happens is it lands

1186
00:54:15,560 --> 00:54:18,400
Speaker 10: bang on top of the Brookhaven results. So this confirms

1187
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:21,760
Speaker 10: the anomaly. It grows to over four sigma, and it's

1188
00:54:21,960 --> 00:54:24,600
Speaker 10: potentially really really exciting. It looks like this is evidence

1189
00:54:24,640 --> 00:54:27,560
Speaker 10: for new physics. But so often with these anomaly stories,

1190
00:54:27,600 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 10: there's a sting in the tale, which is that this case,

1191
00:54:30,600 --> 00:54:33,600
Speaker 10: the very same day that the new experiment published their result,

1192
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:37,759
Speaker 10: a group of theorists produced a new prediction of the

1193
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:41,439
Speaker 10: magnetism of the new one, and this prediction came out

1194
00:54:41,520 --> 00:54:44,719
Speaker 10: much closer to the experimental measurement. So essentially you had

1195
00:54:44,760 --> 00:54:47,959
Speaker 10: these two predictions. One that was performed by this big

1196
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:52,480
Speaker 10: consortium of over one hundred theorists working together, and then

1197
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:56,719
Speaker 10: this new technique using something technically called lattice QCD, using

1198
00:54:56,760 --> 00:54:59,400
Speaker 10: big supercomputers. And so you have these two rival ways

1199
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:02,880
Speaker 10: of addicting theoretically the same thing that we're giving different answers.

1200
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:05,120
Speaker 10: And in one case there's a whacking great anomaly in

1201
00:55:05,160 --> 00:55:07,759
Speaker 10: new physics. In the other case, there's not much to see.

1202
00:55:07,920 --> 00:55:10,279
Speaker 2: Essentially, this is another example of what you were talking

1203
00:55:10,320 --> 00:55:12,680
Speaker 2: about earlier how it can be actually hard to know

1204
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:15,160
Speaker 2: what our theory predicts. Just because we have a theory

1205
00:55:15,200 --> 00:55:17,920
Speaker 2: doesn't mean we know exactly how it predicts and experiments

1206
00:55:18,000 --> 00:55:19,680
Speaker 2: result will turn out. Right. So here we have two

1207
00:55:19,719 --> 00:55:23,440
Speaker 2: different groups using the same theory but getting different predictions,

1208
00:55:23,520 --> 00:55:26,560
Speaker 2: right because the calculations themselves are so hard to do.

1209
00:55:26,960 --> 00:55:27,680
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's right.

1210
00:55:27,760 --> 00:55:29,960
Speaker 10: And in this case it all comes down to again

1211
00:55:30,480 --> 00:55:31,880
Speaker 10: quarks and gluons, which.

1212
00:55:31,680 --> 00:55:33,920
Speaker 9: Are they are a real pain in the art basically.

1213
00:55:36,440 --> 00:55:39,000
Speaker 10: Because the theory that describes them is very, very difficult

1214
00:55:39,040 --> 00:55:41,400
Speaker 10: to make calculations with the theory of what called quantum

1215
00:55:41,480 --> 00:55:44,080
Speaker 10: chromo dynamics, so we said that the nuance magnetism is

1216
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:46,279
Speaker 10: affected by everything that's in the vacuum. Where there are

1217
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:49,160
Speaker 10: quarks and gluon fields in the vacuum, they affect the magnetism,

1218
00:55:49,200 --> 00:55:52,200
Speaker 10: and it's been very difficult historically to calculate this term.

1219
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:54,720
Speaker 9: So the way it was done earlier.

1220
00:55:54,360 --> 00:55:58,520
Speaker 10: Previously was essentially to use experimental data where you have

1221
00:55:59,160 --> 00:56:02,360
Speaker 10: colliders that find electrons and anti electrons, electrons and positrons

1222
00:56:02,400 --> 00:56:04,440
Speaker 10: at each other and then they produce particles made of

1223
00:56:04,520 --> 00:56:08,080
Speaker 10: quarks and gluons. And you can take this collider data

1224
00:56:08,200 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 10: and you can essentially say, well, an electronic positron annihilating

1225
00:56:11,320 --> 00:56:13,879
Speaker 10: to make quarks and gluons is basically the same as

1226
00:56:13,920 --> 00:56:16,239
Speaker 10: a muon interacting with clarks and gluons. You just kind

1227
00:56:16,239 --> 00:56:18,960
Speaker 10: of flip the process on its side effectively, So you

1228
00:56:18,960 --> 00:56:21,080
Speaker 10: can take this data and then you can use a

1229
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:24,160
Speaker 10: recipe to translate it into a prediction for the effect

1230
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:24,960
Speaker 10: of quarks.

1231
00:56:24,640 --> 00:56:25,760
Speaker 9: And gluons on the muon.

1232
00:56:26,160 --> 00:56:27,759
Speaker 10: And that was how it was done, and this gave

1233
00:56:27,800 --> 00:56:29,680
Speaker 10: you this four sigma anomaly.

1234
00:56:30,040 --> 00:56:32,440
Speaker 2: That's very clever. That's like saying, we don't know how

1235
00:56:32,440 --> 00:56:35,000
Speaker 2: to do this calculation, but we can make the universe

1236
00:56:35,080 --> 00:56:38,040
Speaker 2: do this calculation and then extract that information and insert

1237
00:56:38,080 --> 00:56:40,760
Speaker 2: it into our calculation, sort of like using the universe

1238
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:42,280
Speaker 2: as a computer. And that's pretty awesome.

1239
00:56:42,360 --> 00:56:44,280
Speaker 9: Yeah, exactly, Yeah, just take it from nature.

1240
00:56:44,400 --> 00:56:47,120
Speaker 10: That was sort of an accepted, you know, very authority

1241
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:50,320
Speaker 10: tested method. But this new approach was using this technique

1242
00:56:50,320 --> 00:56:52,760
Speaker 10: called lattice QCD, which I'm not going to pretend to understand,

1243
00:56:52,760 --> 00:56:56,200
Speaker 10: but it's basically a way of calculating these sorts of

1244
00:56:56,239 --> 00:56:59,920
Speaker 10: effects from first principles using the equations of the strong interaction,

1245
00:57:00,120 --> 00:57:02,600
Speaker 10: where you break space and time up into this lattice

1246
00:57:02,600 --> 00:57:04,920
Speaker 10: of points and you solve the equations on these lattice

1247
00:57:04,920 --> 00:57:06,400
Speaker 10: points and you get your prediction.

1248
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:07,759
Speaker 9: And they'd sort of made a.

1249
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:09,760
Speaker 10: Breakthrough in this method and how to sort of apply

1250
00:57:09,800 --> 00:57:11,840
Speaker 10: it to the case of the muon and came up

1251
00:57:11,840 --> 00:57:14,400
Speaker 10: with a new calculation of this extra term in the calculation,

1252
00:57:14,920 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 10: and this shifted the result basically towards the experimental measurement.

1253
00:57:18,320 --> 00:57:20,520
Speaker 10: And so the big debate now is which of these

1254
00:57:20,560 --> 00:57:23,840
Speaker 10: two methods is right, you know, is it the experimentally

1255
00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:26,800
Speaker 10: driven one or is it the theoretically driven one, to

1256
00:57:26,840 --> 00:57:29,480
Speaker 10: put it in broad terms, And that is still unresolved.

1257
00:57:29,480 --> 00:57:31,680
Speaker 10: We don't know yet which is right. The big sort

1258
00:57:31,680 --> 00:57:34,760
Speaker 10: of drama in this story now is basically theorists having

1259
00:57:34,760 --> 00:57:36,919
Speaker 10: to sort of juke it out and figure out what's

1260
00:57:36,960 --> 00:57:39,280
Speaker 10: the right way of doing this and hopefully eventually get

1261
00:57:39,280 --> 00:57:41,800
Speaker 10: to a point where both of these methods converge on

1262
00:57:41,840 --> 00:57:43,880
Speaker 10: the same answer and we can kind of agree how

1263
00:57:43,920 --> 00:57:45,520
Speaker 10: magnetic mworanes really ought to be.

1264
00:57:46,400 --> 00:57:49,160
Speaker 2: This is very frustrating for an experimentalist because I feel

1265
00:57:49,240 --> 00:57:52,400
Speaker 2: like we've done our job. We forced the universe to

1266
00:57:52,440 --> 00:57:55,160
Speaker 2: reveal the answer here, and we just need to know

1267
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:57,480
Speaker 2: what it's supposed to be right, and the things like

1268
00:57:57,520 --> 00:57:59,240
Speaker 2: can't get their house in order and figure out like

1269
00:57:59,280 --> 00:58:03,120
Speaker 2: what we were supposed to have measured. It's like, you know,

1270
00:58:03,600 --> 00:58:07,600
Speaker 2: get it together, folks. But in this scenario, is there

1271
00:58:07,680 --> 00:58:10,200
Speaker 2: something we expect? You were saying, this is a great

1272
00:58:10,240 --> 00:58:13,120
Speaker 2: way to probe other fields. What other kind of fields

1273
00:58:13,240 --> 00:58:15,280
Speaker 2: might be out there that could be giving this effect?

1274
00:58:15,320 --> 00:58:18,520
Speaker 2: Is this the kind of thing that's predicted by various

1275
00:58:18,560 --> 00:58:19,440
Speaker 2: theories with.

1276
00:58:19,480 --> 00:58:22,600
Speaker 10: Only nominally there are quite a lot of potential explanations

1277
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:26,800
Speaker 10: on the market. So some involve supersymmetry, which is something

1278
00:58:26,840 --> 00:58:28,480
Speaker 10: that we've been looking for at the LHC for the

1279
00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:30,920
Speaker 10: last decade and have so far found no evidence for.

1280
00:58:31,040 --> 00:58:35,320
Speaker 10: But you know, it's so supersymmetry. Supersymmetric particles interacting essentially

1281
00:58:35,640 --> 00:58:38,320
Speaker 10: with the muon in the vacuum could produce an effect

1282
00:58:38,360 --> 00:58:42,920
Speaker 10: like this. Another possible A popular set of explanations involves

1283
00:58:43,520 --> 00:58:46,200
Speaker 10: what are known as dark forces, which sounds rather sinister,

1284
00:58:46,280 --> 00:58:49,960
Speaker 10: but these are essentially the idea that dark matter may

1285
00:58:50,000 --> 00:58:53,760
Speaker 10: not just be one particle like you know, it's often

1286
00:58:53,800 --> 00:58:56,000
Speaker 10: assumed it's like it's a whimp or it's an axion,

1287
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:58,400
Speaker 10: But perhaps dark matter as a sector is quite rich

1288
00:58:58,480 --> 00:59:00,880
Speaker 10: and there are more than just as in the atomic sector,

1289
00:59:00,920 --> 00:59:04,000
Speaker 10: there are multiple particles interacting with forces. Maybe the dark

1290
00:59:04,040 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 10: sector involves multiple particles with its own set of forces.

1291
00:59:07,040 --> 00:59:09,480
Speaker 10: So there is one idea is this is actually evidence

1292
00:59:09,560 --> 00:59:12,640
Speaker 10: of some kind of dark force field that allows dark

1293
00:59:12,680 --> 00:59:15,360
Speaker 10: matter particles to interact with each other. That's subtly again

1294
00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 10: altering the way that the muon behaves. So the honest

1295
00:59:19,440 --> 00:59:21,480
Speaker 10: answer is we don't know which of these is right yet.

1296
00:59:21,520 --> 00:59:24,000
Speaker 10: But again this would be a clue. So if this

1297
00:59:24,040 --> 00:59:28,400
Speaker 10: anomaly was confirmed and the theorists agree on some calculation

1298
00:59:28,520 --> 00:59:31,440
Speaker 10: that gives this anomaly some high significance, you would then

1299
00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:34,640
Speaker 10: know for pretty well certain there is something new out

1300
00:59:34,640 --> 00:59:37,520
Speaker 10: there to find, and you can make various arguments to say, well,

1301
00:59:37,560 --> 00:59:39,960
Speaker 10: the MW one has this certain mass, so we kind

1302
00:59:39,960 --> 00:59:42,680
Speaker 10: of know the energy scale that the new physics ought

1303
00:59:42,680 --> 00:59:43,320
Speaker 10: to show up at.

1304
00:59:43,360 --> 00:59:45,760
Speaker 9: So it kind of gives experiments.

1305
00:59:45,160 --> 00:59:48,160
Speaker 10: Like the LHC a target where we might expect, you know, say,

1306
00:59:48,200 --> 00:59:51,040
Speaker 10: is find a new particle in the GeV range, for example,

1307
00:59:51,040 --> 00:59:53,280
Speaker 10: and then you go and search for particular signatures. So

1308
00:59:53,320 --> 00:59:57,120
Speaker 10: it wouldn't be the discovery of a particular new particle,

1309
00:59:57,160 --> 00:59:59,040
Speaker 10: but it would tell you there is a new particle

1310
00:59:59,040 --> 01:00:01,200
Speaker 10: there to be found in that would drive an experimental

1311
01:00:01,240 --> 01:00:03,520
Speaker 10: effort to actually figure out what this thing is.

1312
01:00:03,720 --> 01:00:06,080
Speaker 2: Do you think it's important that we have a theoretical

1313
01:00:06,120 --> 01:00:09,000
Speaker 2: idea for what we're looking for before we discover it.

1314
01:00:09,640 --> 01:00:12,400
Speaker 2: You said something in your book which struck me. You said, quote,

1315
01:00:12,480 --> 01:00:15,880
Speaker 2: finding ourselves an unknown territory without a theoretical map to

1316
01:00:15,880 --> 01:00:21,160
Speaker 2: guide us has bewildered and disheartened many personally. I feel like, personally,

1317
01:00:21,160 --> 01:00:23,560
Speaker 2: I don't feel disheartened by not having a theoretical map.

1318
01:00:23,600 --> 01:00:25,760
Speaker 2: I feel excited. I'm like, Ooh, let's go out and

1319
01:00:25,800 --> 01:00:29,280
Speaker 2: explore this territory. Because my personal scientific fantasy is to

1320
01:00:29,320 --> 01:00:33,520
Speaker 2: find something unexpected, something that makes people go, what that's impossible,

1321
01:00:33,800 --> 01:00:36,840
Speaker 2: you know, because those are the moments that unravel everything

1322
01:00:36,840 --> 01:00:38,920
Speaker 2: we thought we understand about the universe, you know, the

1323
01:00:38,920 --> 01:00:41,760
Speaker 2: photoelectric effect, the black body spectrum, this kind of stuff.

1324
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:45,120
Speaker 2: Why do you feel like people are bewildered or disheartened

1325
01:00:45,160 --> 01:00:47,960
Speaker 2: by not having theoretical guidance, not having like tips for

1326
01:00:48,040 --> 01:00:49,880
Speaker 2: where to go look and what we might see.

1327
01:00:50,080 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 10: I mean, personally, I agree with you. So I think,

1328
01:00:52,120 --> 01:00:55,000
Speaker 10: actually this moment is really exciting. The idea that we're

1329
01:00:55,040 --> 01:00:58,440
Speaker 10: exploring the universe as we find it empirically observationally.

1330
01:00:58,640 --> 01:01:00,040
Speaker 9: That's a great place to be.

1331
01:01:00,160 --> 01:01:02,240
Speaker 10: And I would love like you to see something new

1332
01:01:02,280 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 10: and unexpected that no one had.

1333
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:05,880
Speaker 9: Predicted, because that's where you make the biggest progress.

1334
01:01:06,160 --> 01:01:08,240
Speaker 10: But I think it's fair to say that if you

1335
01:01:08,320 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 10: went back fifteen years before the Large Hadron Collider, there

1336
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:14,280
Speaker 10: was this great sense of anticipation in terms of what

1337
01:01:14,320 --> 01:01:15,920
Speaker 10: we were going to find, and there were these very

1338
01:01:15,920 --> 01:01:18,120
Speaker 10: clearly defined targets for what people were going to look for,

1339
01:01:18,160 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 10: and great optimism that some of them would show up.

1340
01:01:20,160 --> 01:01:21,720
Speaker 10: So the Higgs was one of them, and that did

1341
01:01:21,840 --> 01:01:23,919
Speaker 10: obligingly show up for us, But there was good reasons

1342
01:01:23,920 --> 01:01:25,600
Speaker 10: to think it would because of all the success of

1343
01:01:25,640 --> 01:01:29,440
Speaker 10: the Standard Model decades beforehand. But then things like supersymmetry

1344
01:01:29,560 --> 01:01:32,360
Speaker 10: or extramensions of space there was a lot of work

1345
01:01:32,520 --> 01:01:35,960
Speaker 10: going into and lots of predictions and lots of experimental searches,

1346
01:01:36,000 --> 01:01:38,400
Speaker 10: and none of them turned up. So I think that

1347
01:01:38,440 --> 01:01:40,600
Speaker 10: did leave people who had invested a lot of time

1348
01:01:41,080 --> 01:01:45,080
Speaker 10: and effort into exploring those ideas feeling pretty dispirited. But

1349
01:01:45,200 --> 01:01:46,960
Speaker 10: it sort of depends which angle you're coming at it from,

1350
01:01:47,040 --> 01:01:48,760
Speaker 10: I think, and it is a sort of change that

1351
01:01:48,800 --> 01:01:52,000
Speaker 10: I think looking at the history of particle physics particularly,

1352
01:01:52,320 --> 01:01:54,000
Speaker 10: there has been a change in the last ten years.

1353
01:01:54,000 --> 01:01:56,000
Speaker 10: I think it's probably the biggest impact in a way

1354
01:01:56,000 --> 01:01:58,640
Speaker 10: of the LHC is sort of a shift from this

1355
01:01:58,720 --> 01:02:03,000
Speaker 10: theoretically led era back into one that is experimentally driven.

1356
01:02:03,320 --> 01:02:05,320
Speaker 10: If you went back to the middle of the twentieth century,

1357
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:08,640
Speaker 10: that was a period where particle physics was really experimentally driven.

1358
01:02:08,680 --> 01:02:10,880
Speaker 10: You had all these particles appearing in cloud chambers and

1359
01:02:10,880 --> 01:02:13,439
Speaker 10: bubble chambers and collider experiments that no one really knew

1360
01:02:13,440 --> 01:02:15,920
Speaker 10: what was going on or understood, and that forced a

1361
01:02:15,960 --> 01:02:18,120
Speaker 10: theoretical effort to sort of make sense of this crazy

1362
01:02:18,200 --> 01:02:20,840
Speaker 10: zoo of particles, and out of that comes the quark

1363
01:02:20,920 --> 01:02:23,360
Speaker 10: model and then later the Standard Model. But since the

1364
01:02:23,400 --> 01:02:26,480
Speaker 10: Standard Model was established in the seventies, I think it's

1365
01:02:26,520 --> 01:02:29,160
Speaker 10: fair to say, broadly speaking, most of the story of

1366
01:02:29,160 --> 01:02:32,160
Speaker 10: particle physics has been a series of confirmations.

1367
01:02:31,400 --> 01:02:33,640
Speaker 9: Of predictions of the standard model. It's the great triumph

1368
01:02:33,760 --> 01:02:35,240
Speaker 9: of what Winberg.

1369
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:37,360
Speaker 10: And Glashow and others did, which they predicted the existence

1370
01:02:37,360 --> 01:02:39,880
Speaker 10: of the Wnz bosons. They were found in the eighties.

1371
01:02:40,080 --> 01:02:43,320
Speaker 10: The Higgs boson was found in twenty twelve. The other

1372
01:02:43,440 --> 01:02:45,720
Speaker 10: quarks that were sort of predicted were discovered. So it

1373
01:02:45,760 --> 01:02:48,560
Speaker 10: was really a series of like, yep, tick, and now

1374
01:02:48,760 --> 01:02:51,080
Speaker 10: in twenty twelve we ticked the lark's box, and now

1375
01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:53,800
Speaker 10: we're like, Okay, there isn't a guide anymore. We filled

1376
01:02:53,800 --> 01:02:55,840
Speaker 10: in all the boxes, but we know there's more out there,

1377
01:02:56,120 --> 01:02:58,479
Speaker 10: but we don't necessarily know where to go next. There's

1378
01:02:58,480 --> 01:03:01,600
Speaker 10: been an adjustment have gone through and shifting from that

1379
01:03:01,880 --> 01:03:03,440
Speaker 10: era where you sort of knew what you were looking

1380
01:03:03,480 --> 01:03:05,120
Speaker 10: for and you expected to find it, to one where

1381
01:03:05,120 --> 01:03:06,840
Speaker 10: you don't really know any more what you're looking for

1382
01:03:06,880 --> 01:03:08,920
Speaker 10: and you're just going out and exploring and trying to

1383
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:12,360
Speaker 10: design experiments and searches that are broad enough that they

1384
01:03:12,440 --> 01:03:15,240
Speaker 10: can capture even the things that you didn't necessarily predict

1385
01:03:15,280 --> 01:03:15,920
Speaker 10: ahead of time.

1386
01:03:16,320 --> 01:03:18,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like there's sort of a pendulum that

1387
01:03:18,480 --> 01:03:22,320
Speaker 2: swings between you know, philosophy and botany, and in the

1388
01:03:22,480 --> 01:03:24,960
Speaker 2: philosophical eras it's like, you know, we know how this

1389
01:03:25,080 --> 01:03:26,760
Speaker 2: all works, and we can predict it, and we know

1390
01:03:26,800 --> 01:03:28,640
Speaker 2: what you should do and how to look for it.

1391
01:03:28,680 --> 01:03:31,120
Speaker 2: And then we swing into the botany ERAa, where we're like, well,

1392
01:03:31,160 --> 01:03:32,800
Speaker 2: we have no idea what's going on. We're just taking

1393
01:03:32,880 --> 01:03:35,040
Speaker 2: data and describing all the weird stuff that we're seeing

1394
01:03:35,080 --> 01:03:37,520
Speaker 2: out there in the universe. And I feel like mostly

1395
01:03:37,520 --> 01:03:40,040
Speaker 2: we've been in the philosophy era, and it's exciting to

1396
01:03:40,080 --> 01:03:42,760
Speaker 2: me to swing into the botany area where you know,

1397
01:03:42,840 --> 01:03:45,120
Speaker 2: as you say, experimentalists are on the forefront and we

1398
01:03:45,160 --> 01:03:48,400
Speaker 2: can go out and discover weird new stuff that nobody understands.

1399
01:03:48,840 --> 01:03:49,880
Speaker 2: To me, that's really exciting.

1400
01:03:49,960 --> 01:03:52,440
Speaker 9: So we talking about botany, I mean just this historical aside.

1401
01:03:52,440 --> 01:03:55,200
Speaker 10: The same reaction came in the thirties when things like

1402
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:58,240
Speaker 10: the mewon and the padrons were being discovered, where people

1403
01:03:58,280 --> 01:04:00,640
Speaker 10: like Fermi said all these new parts articles of period.

1404
01:04:00,640 --> 01:04:02,400
Speaker 10: People were quite dismayed by it because they were like,

1405
01:04:02,440 --> 01:04:04,160
Speaker 10: it didn't fit into this neat theoreist or picture.

1406
01:04:04,200 --> 01:04:05,200
Speaker 9: And I think it was firm who.

1407
01:04:05,040 --> 01:04:07,080
Speaker 10: Said, you know, if I could remember the name of

1408
01:04:07,120 --> 01:04:09,040
Speaker 10: all these particles, I would have been a botanist.

1409
01:04:11,760 --> 01:04:12,680
Speaker 9: So it's not the first time.

1410
01:04:12,800 --> 01:04:15,120
Speaker 2: He says they're dismissively. But to me, that's very exciting.

1411
01:04:15,840 --> 01:04:16,760
Speaker 9: Yeah.

1412
01:04:16,080 --> 01:04:19,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, So tell me how excited are people on the ground.

1413
01:04:19,200 --> 01:04:21,680
Speaker 2: I mean, you've done a great job of laying out

1414
01:04:21,720 --> 01:04:24,240
Speaker 2: these anomalies in your book and also giving us the

1415
01:04:24,280 --> 01:04:27,280
Speaker 2: caveats not over selling it. But you know, the people

1416
01:04:27,400 --> 01:04:30,360
Speaker 2: working on this stuff who are really seeing the details,

1417
01:04:30,400 --> 01:04:32,920
Speaker 2: are they excited? Are they betting that this is new physics?

1418
01:04:33,160 --> 01:04:35,840
Speaker 2: Or are they skeptical and jaded from all the anomalies

1419
01:04:35,880 --> 01:04:37,080
Speaker 2: that have come and gone.

1420
01:04:37,280 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 9: I think it depends on who you speak to.

1421
01:04:38,880 --> 01:04:40,600
Speaker 10: I mean, I think broadly speaking, I think it's fair

1422
01:04:40,640 --> 01:04:43,120
Speaker 10: to say that experimentalists tend to be more cautious.

1423
01:04:43,840 --> 01:04:45,640
Speaker 9: I don't know if jaded is the right word, but certainly

1424
01:04:45,640 --> 01:04:46,240
Speaker 9: more cautious.

1425
01:04:46,560 --> 01:04:49,160
Speaker 10: And theorists are are a bit more enthusiastic, and you know,

1426
01:04:49,520 --> 01:04:51,919
Speaker 10: and new and lomly turns up and they're like, amazing, great,

1427
01:04:51,960 --> 01:04:54,040
Speaker 10: and they kind of write loads of papers about what

1428
01:04:54,080 --> 01:04:56,480
Speaker 10: could explain this thing, and there's nothing wrong with that.

1429
01:04:56,520 --> 01:04:58,200
Speaker 10: I think that's sort of two different approaches to the

1430
01:04:58,280 --> 01:05:00,280
Speaker 10: same thing. And I think, you know, as experiment because

1431
01:05:00,280 --> 01:05:02,560
Speaker 10: you do have to be more cautious because you're claiming to,

1432
01:05:03,160 --> 01:05:05,760
Speaker 10: you know, measure what nature is actually doing, and you

1433
01:05:05,800 --> 01:05:08,080
Speaker 10: don't want to be biasing your results based on some

1434
01:05:08,160 --> 01:05:11,280
Speaker 10: presupposition of what you're expecting to see, whereas in theory,

1435
01:05:11,320 --> 01:05:12,720
Speaker 10: you know, you come up with an explanation, there's no

1436
01:05:12,720 --> 01:05:14,560
Speaker 10: harm done. Really, I mean, if it doesn't turn out

1437
01:05:14,560 --> 01:05:16,280
Speaker 10: to be true, that's that's sort of fine. But it

1438
01:05:16,320 --> 01:05:18,760
Speaker 10: depends on the anomaly. It depends on who you talk to.

1439
01:05:18,880 --> 01:05:20,600
Speaker 10: But like with me on G minus two, I think

1440
01:05:20,640 --> 01:05:25,000
Speaker 10: if you speak to Lattice QCD theorists, they will say, well,

1441
01:05:25,160 --> 01:05:27,240
Speaker 10: there's nothing to see here because it's you know, the

1442
01:05:27,320 --> 01:05:30,280
Speaker 10: Lattice says that there's no anomaly. If you speak to

1443
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:33,680
Speaker 10: other theorists who worked on the other method, they'll tell you, oh, no,

1444
01:05:34,000 --> 01:05:35,920
Speaker 10: this method solid and there's new physics. So I think

1445
01:05:35,920 --> 01:05:38,240
Speaker 10: it really depends where you're coming from. I think the

1446
01:05:38,320 --> 01:05:42,480
Speaker 10: one anomaly in the book that I found the most

1447
01:05:42,520 --> 01:05:45,560
Speaker 10: compelling and where I think a lot of the field

1448
01:05:46,000 --> 01:05:48,840
Speaker 10: also believes this is something is actually not a particle

1449
01:05:48,880 --> 01:05:52,200
Speaker 10: physics anomaly, but one in cosmology which is anomally called

1450
01:05:52,200 --> 01:05:55,560
Speaker 10: the Hubble tension, which is essentially there's disagreement over how

1451
01:05:55,600 --> 01:05:58,680
Speaker 10: fast the universe is expanding or ought to be expanding.

1452
01:05:58,760 --> 01:06:01,800
Speaker 10: So you have these two methods of measuring this, one

1453
01:06:01,840 --> 01:06:04,360
Speaker 10: which involves looking at stuff we can see in the sky,

1454
01:06:04,480 --> 01:06:07,880
Speaker 10: so galaxies, measuring their distances and their speeds, and then

1455
01:06:08,040 --> 01:06:11,040
Speaker 10: you measure the expansion rate of the universe from that data.

1456
01:06:11,840 --> 01:06:14,120
Speaker 10: Another way that evolves looking at the light from the

1457
01:06:14,120 --> 01:06:17,800
Speaker 10: Big Bang, determining the properties of the early universe, and

1458
01:06:17,840 --> 01:06:21,040
Speaker 10: then using the standard cosmological model to run the clock

1459
01:06:21,120 --> 01:06:24,600
Speaker 10: forward and predict from that early data what the expansion

1460
01:06:24,640 --> 01:06:25,160
Speaker 10: rate should be.

1461
01:06:25,200 --> 01:06:25,360
Speaker 7: Now.

1462
01:06:25,360 --> 01:06:27,160
Speaker 10: And these two numbers do not agree with each other

1463
01:06:27,240 --> 01:06:30,400
Speaker 10: by over five sigma. Now, so this is a pretty

1464
01:06:30,400 --> 01:06:32,720
Speaker 10: gold plated anomaly, and at least it would be in

1465
01:06:32,720 --> 01:06:35,960
Speaker 10: particle physics terms. But in that case, you know, there's

1466
01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:38,360
Speaker 10: been this long argument for a decade now about what

1467
01:06:38,440 --> 01:06:40,880
Speaker 10: is going on, and lots of people trying to find

1468
01:06:41,000 --> 01:06:44,480
Speaker 10: mistakes in how we measure distances, for example in the

1469
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:47,959
Speaker 10: local universe or drilling into the cosmic microwave background data

1470
01:06:47,960 --> 01:06:50,720
Speaker 10: that's used for this prediction. And after a decade of

1471
01:06:51,040 --> 01:06:53,560
Speaker 10: scouring the data and multiple different ways of measuring the

1472
01:06:53,640 --> 01:06:57,439
Speaker 10: same things, no one's found a problem, really, not nothing

1473
01:06:57,480 --> 01:06:59,960
Speaker 10: that can explain the size of the anomaly that you're seeing.

1474
01:07:00,120 --> 01:07:01,000
Speaker 9: So I think more and.

1475
01:07:00,960 --> 01:07:04,040
Speaker 10: More of the field is now coalescing around the belief

1476
01:07:04,080 --> 01:07:08,480
Speaker 10: that this is actually genuinely something profound that we don't understand.

1477
01:07:08,600 --> 01:07:11,000
Speaker 10: The difficulty there, I think, and this comes back to

1478
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:13,080
Speaker 10: the point we were talking about earlier, is there isn't

1479
01:07:13,080 --> 01:07:16,200
Speaker 10: any ready made theoretical explanation for what's causing this. There

1480
01:07:16,280 --> 01:07:19,400
Speaker 10: is sort of various things that can help relieve the

1481
01:07:19,480 --> 01:07:21,760
Speaker 10: tension a bit, but none of them solve it. So

1482
01:07:21,800 --> 01:07:23,800
Speaker 10: it's not like there's one sort of new thing where

1483
01:07:23,800 --> 01:07:25,640
Speaker 10: you say, oh, it's dark energy like you had with

1484
01:07:25,680 --> 01:07:27,360
Speaker 10: the accelerated universe in the nineties.

1485
01:07:27,760 --> 01:07:30,680
Speaker 9: It looks like to explain this thing you need new.

1486
01:07:30,480 --> 01:07:34,400
Speaker 10: Physics, multiple different periods in the universe's history, of different types.

1487
01:07:34,760 --> 01:07:37,600
Speaker 10: And I think that makes people uncomfortable because this principle

1488
01:07:37,600 --> 01:07:40,240
Speaker 10: of Ocham's raiser, if you see something new, there should

1489
01:07:40,240 --> 01:07:42,520
Speaker 10: be some really simple explanation that just ah, right, yeah,

1490
01:07:42,560 --> 01:07:44,240
Speaker 10: you know, that's the answer, Whereas in this case it

1491
01:07:44,280 --> 01:07:46,439
Speaker 10: seems very difficult to do that. And I think it's

1492
01:07:46,440 --> 01:07:48,680
Speaker 10: meant that it has taken time for this anomaly to

1493
01:07:48,720 --> 01:07:51,680
Speaker 10: really kind of be accepted as a genuine effect, because

1494
01:07:51,720 --> 01:07:52,800
Speaker 10: it is hard to explain.

1495
01:07:53,560 --> 01:07:55,320
Speaker 2: Well, tell me a little bit about how you thought

1496
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:59,360
Speaker 2: about presenting anomalies to the public, because your audience are

1497
01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:02,680
Speaker 2: people who can't really go through the details and question

1498
01:08:03,160 --> 01:08:06,880
Speaker 2: your arguments necessarily, and so there's a responsibility when you're

1499
01:08:06,880 --> 01:08:08,680
Speaker 2: presenting this stuff to the public. You want to make

1500
01:08:08,720 --> 01:08:11,200
Speaker 2: it sound exciting. You're selling a book, after all, but

1501
01:08:11,280 --> 01:08:13,920
Speaker 2: you also want to be responsible and you don't want

1502
01:08:14,000 --> 01:08:16,400
Speaker 2: to overhype stuff. And you tell in your book a

1503
01:08:16,439 --> 01:08:19,040
Speaker 2: story of sort of a disastrous example of this, you know,

1504
01:08:19,080 --> 01:08:22,040
Speaker 2: the BICEP two result. You said, quote, I can't think

1505
01:08:22,080 --> 01:08:24,760
Speaker 2: of a more disastrous example of scientific hubris than the

1506
01:08:24,800 --> 01:08:28,160
Speaker 2: sorry story of Bicep two, which I thought was, you know,

1507
01:08:28,400 --> 01:08:31,720
Speaker 2: harsh but fair. How did you strike a balance in

1508
01:08:31,800 --> 01:08:32,320
Speaker 2: your book?

1509
01:08:32,720 --> 01:08:34,680
Speaker 10: Yeah, And I think the way I try to put

1510
01:08:34,680 --> 01:08:38,280
Speaker 10: this across is that anomalies potentially can be revolutionary. They

1511
01:08:38,320 --> 01:08:40,600
Speaker 10: can give you this amazing new insight to something you

1512
01:08:40,680 --> 01:08:43,439
Speaker 10: never understood before, but they can also lead you astray.

1513
01:08:43,479 --> 01:08:45,080
Speaker 10: And so at the beginning of the book, I actually

1514
01:08:45,120 --> 01:08:47,840
Speaker 10: kind of have a whole chapter basically on how anomalies

1515
01:08:47,880 --> 01:08:50,080
Speaker 10: can trick you and how you can all go horribly wrong.

1516
01:08:50,320 --> 01:08:52,960
Speaker 10: I mean, so with the BICEP two example, that was

1517
01:08:52,960 --> 01:08:57,200
Speaker 10: this discovery in twenty fourteen where a telescope at the

1518
01:08:57,200 --> 01:09:01,400
Speaker 10: South Pole found evidence for gravitational way from inflation. So

1519
01:09:01,439 --> 01:09:04,880
Speaker 10: this period of exponential expansion that cosmologists believed happened in

1520
01:09:04,880 --> 01:09:07,320
Speaker 10: the very first instant of the Big Bang, and this

1521
01:09:07,439 --> 01:09:09,879
Speaker 10: was presented to the world before it was peer reviewed,

1522
01:09:10,160 --> 01:09:13,240
Speaker 10: this big press conference, and you know, this announcement that

1523
01:09:13,320 --> 01:09:16,360
Speaker 10: you know, essentially we'd heard the bee of the Big Bang,

1524
01:09:16,640 --> 01:09:19,919
Speaker 10: that we'd proven cosmic inflation, that we probe quantum gravity,

1525
01:09:20,040 --> 01:09:21,639
Speaker 10: you know, all this talk about Nobel prizes.

1526
01:09:21,680 --> 01:09:22,959
Speaker 9: And then within about.

1527
01:09:22,720 --> 01:09:25,000
Speaker 10: A month or two, the whole thing was undiscovered as

1528
01:09:25,000 --> 01:09:27,560
Speaker 10: it was realized that they'd taken a key bit of

1529
01:09:27,680 --> 01:09:32,240
Speaker 10: data from a PowerPoint presentation by the Plank Spacecraft collaboration,

1530
01:09:32,800 --> 01:09:35,160
Speaker 10: which was used to basically take into account the effect

1531
01:09:35,240 --> 01:09:39,040
Speaker 10: of dust contaminating their observations of the cosmic microwave background,

1532
01:09:39,640 --> 01:09:42,880
Speaker 10: and they misinterpreted this slide effectively, and when this was

1533
01:09:42,880 --> 01:09:46,320
Speaker 10: taken into account, the whole signal literally turned to.

1534
01:09:46,360 --> 01:09:47,520
Speaker 9: Dust, so it disappeared.

1535
01:09:48,439 --> 01:09:50,840
Speaker 10: So I think that the problem with what byStep two

1536
01:09:50,880 --> 01:09:53,200
Speaker 10: did was not necessarily that they made a mistake, because

1537
01:09:53,439 --> 01:09:54,120
Speaker 10: mistakes happened.

1538
01:09:54,200 --> 01:09:56,800
Speaker 9: That can happen, but it's the way it was communicated.

1539
01:09:56,800 --> 01:09:59,080
Speaker 10: I think that it was they called a press conference,

1540
01:09:59,120 --> 01:10:01,240
Speaker 10: they made a big deal out of it, and before

1541
01:10:01,240 --> 01:10:04,000
Speaker 10: it had been really thoroughly checked by external peer reviewers.

1542
01:10:04,200 --> 01:10:06,080
Speaker 10: I think that was what weren't wrong there. So in

1543
01:10:06,080 --> 01:10:08,000
Speaker 10: the book, you know, all of the anomalies, I talk

1544
01:10:08,000 --> 01:10:10,400
Speaker 10: about the reason their anomalies and not discoveries is because

1545
01:10:10,400 --> 01:10:12,120
Speaker 10: none of them are confirmed. And I go through each

1546
01:10:12,160 --> 01:10:14,439
Speaker 10: of them and say, well, you know, here's the exciting explanation,

1547
01:10:14,800 --> 01:10:17,880
Speaker 10: here's the boring explanation, and I think it hopefully gives

1548
01:10:17,880 --> 01:10:20,280
Speaker 10: readers a balanced view of, you know, what the story

1549
01:10:20,360 --> 01:10:22,280
Speaker 10: is with each of them. But the other way, I

1550
01:10:22,280 --> 01:10:24,200
Speaker 10: think that whether or not any of them actually turn

1551
01:10:24,240 --> 01:10:26,799
Speaker 10: into a new physics discovery, I think there's huge excitement

1552
01:10:26,920 --> 01:10:29,720
Speaker 10: just in the process of drilling into these things, and

1553
01:10:29,760 --> 01:10:32,680
Speaker 10: you know, learning about the experiments that people do, the

1554
01:10:32,760 --> 01:10:35,560
Speaker 10: lengths they go to to measure these quantities, the emotional

1555
01:10:35,760 --> 01:10:38,519
Speaker 10: rollercoaster people go through, you know, when they think they're

1556
01:10:38,560 --> 01:10:40,479
Speaker 10: seeing something and then they realize they haven't. One of

1557
01:10:40,479 --> 01:10:41,760
Speaker 10: the stories I tell in the book is my own

1558
01:10:41,800 --> 01:10:43,439
Speaker 10: research so we talked about this at the beginning of

1559
01:10:43,439 --> 01:10:46,680
Speaker 10: the podcast, where we thought collectively in our area of

1560
01:10:46,720 --> 01:10:50,120
Speaker 10: particle physics that we were seeing signs of something genuinely exciting.

1561
01:10:50,160 --> 01:10:53,000
Speaker 10: And what happened as I was writing the book, in fact,

1562
01:10:53,200 --> 01:10:55,720
Speaker 10: was that we discovered in some of our measurements there

1563
01:10:55,840 --> 01:10:58,720
Speaker 10: was a hidden or a missed background that we had

1564
01:10:58,720 --> 01:11:01,840
Speaker 10: not properly understood. And this was a real moment of

1565
01:11:01,880 --> 01:11:04,360
Speaker 10: you know, horror, essentially, when you realize that you put

1566
01:11:04,400 --> 01:11:06,479
Speaker 10: measurements out into the world that have an error in them,

1567
01:11:06,800 --> 01:11:10,200
Speaker 10: and when this was corrected, a set of the anomalies disappeared,

1568
01:11:10,200 --> 01:11:12,320
Speaker 10: and essentially that you know, once you're corrected for this effect,

1569
01:11:12,439 --> 01:11:14,160
Speaker 10: it agree with the standard model. So what I look

1570
01:11:14,320 --> 01:11:16,760
Speaker 10: like you're on the brink of discovering something really big.

1571
01:11:16,800 --> 01:11:19,080
Speaker 10: You realize, oh, actually it's the opposite. You've made a

1572
01:11:19,120 --> 01:11:20,680
Speaker 10: pretty spectacular Cocker.

1573
01:11:20,640 --> 01:11:22,000
Speaker 2: Said, trombone sound here.

1574
01:11:22,160 --> 01:11:26,719
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, So I think it's important to see that

1575
01:11:26,720 --> 01:11:28,720
Speaker 10: that's how science works. You know, when you're working at

1576
01:11:28,720 --> 01:11:31,559
Speaker 10: the edge of your understanding, you're in real danger of

1577
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:34,160
Speaker 10: making mistakes because you're in territory that you don't know

1578
01:11:34,439 --> 01:11:37,040
Speaker 10: where you're stepping. You know, your foothold is not secure,

1579
01:11:37,479 --> 01:11:39,080
Speaker 10: and you may take as much care as you can

1580
01:11:39,120 --> 01:11:41,160
Speaker 10: where there's always a chance that you put a foot wrong,

1581
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:44,799
Speaker 10: but gradually you know sciences self correcting. These mistakes are eventually,

1582
01:11:45,120 --> 01:11:49,000
Speaker 10: sometimes quite quickly found out, and even when the anomalies

1583
01:11:49,040 --> 01:11:51,920
Speaker 10: go away, you learn something new. So you may learn

1584
01:11:52,400 --> 01:11:55,280
Speaker 10: about how to make calculations with a standard model, for example,

1585
01:11:55,360 --> 01:11:58,400
Speaker 10: or you may learn about particular types of background processes

1586
01:11:58,400 --> 01:12:01,040
Speaker 10: that you didn't understand, and that allows you when you

1587
01:12:01,040 --> 01:12:03,400
Speaker 10: do another experiment or you make another prediction in the future,

1588
01:12:03,439 --> 01:12:06,320
Speaker 10: you're on much more solid grounds. So these anomalies are

1589
01:12:06,360 --> 01:12:10,160
Speaker 10: kind of a grindstone where you're sharpening your scientific tools.

1590
01:12:10,320 --> 01:12:12,639
Speaker 10: Even when they don't lead to a big breakthrough, they

1591
01:12:12,680 --> 01:12:14,599
Speaker 10: are kind of equipping you for the next steps.

1592
01:12:14,920 --> 01:12:17,480
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, let's hope that they lead to new anomalies

1593
01:12:17,520 --> 01:12:19,880
Speaker 2: that actually do turn out to be new particles. That's

1594
01:12:19,920 --> 01:12:20,599
Speaker 2: a lot more fun.

1595
01:12:20,760 --> 01:12:22,200
Speaker 9: Yeah, wonderful.

1596
01:12:22,240 --> 01:12:23,960
Speaker 2: Well, thanks very much for coming to talk to us

1597
01:12:24,040 --> 01:12:26,960
Speaker 2: about all the exciting hints on the edge of the

1598
01:12:26,960 --> 01:12:29,880
Speaker 2: particle physics frontier that might be the revolution in our

1599
01:12:29,960 --> 01:12:32,720
Speaker 2: understanding about the universe. And I encourage everyone to check

1600
01:12:32,760 --> 01:12:36,800
Speaker 2: out Harry's new book space oddities everywhere books are sold. Harry,

1601
01:12:36,840 --> 01:12:38,719
Speaker 2: thanks very much for joining us today on the podcast.

1602
01:12:38,960 --> 01:12:40,320
Speaker 9: Thanks for having me. Great talking to you.

1603
01:12:41,120 --> 01:12:44,439
Speaker 1: All right, an interesting conversation. What's your takeaway from all

1604
01:12:44,479 --> 01:12:46,160
Speaker 1: of those oddities out there?

1605
01:12:46,280 --> 01:12:48,639
Speaker 2: I think they're all exciting, but I'm not one hundred

1606
01:12:48,640 --> 01:12:52,480
Speaker 2: percent convinced that any of them really mean a new discovery,

1607
01:12:52,840 --> 01:12:55,080
Speaker 2: a new deep understanding of the universe.

1608
01:12:55,320 --> 01:12:59,160
Speaker 1: Wait, what you're skeptical of a scientist saying, hey, let's

1609
01:12:59,200 --> 01:12:59,840
Speaker 1: go explore the.

1610
01:13:00,600 --> 01:13:02,720
Speaker 2: No I think it's great to explore the unknown. One

1611
01:13:02,720 --> 01:13:04,400
Speaker 2: thing I really like about Harry's book is that he

1612
01:13:04,479 --> 01:13:07,360
Speaker 2: tells you why they're potentially exciting, but he also gives

1613
01:13:07,400 --> 01:13:10,640
Speaker 2: you a realistic sense for why they might have prosaic explanations.

1614
01:13:10,920 --> 01:13:12,960
Speaker 2: It might just be that the ice in Antarctica is

1615
01:13:12,960 --> 01:13:15,400
Speaker 2: not as simple as we thought, or that the calculations

1616
01:13:15,400 --> 01:13:17,439
Speaker 2: of the Standard Model are harder to do than we

1617
01:13:17,520 --> 01:13:20,000
Speaker 2: expect it, so we're not sure exactly what to compare

1618
01:13:20,040 --> 01:13:22,960
Speaker 2: it to. So stay tuned, is the final answer.

1619
01:13:23,600 --> 01:13:25,599
Speaker 1: So these oddities are maybe not so odd.

1620
01:13:26,880 --> 01:13:29,080
Speaker 2: We might mean that we learned something deeper about the universe,

1621
01:13:29,160 --> 01:13:31,400
Speaker 2: or we might just learn about the ice in Antarctica.

1622
01:13:31,439 --> 01:13:33,480
Speaker 2: Either way, we're going to learn something.

1623
01:13:33,479 --> 01:13:37,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, and hopefully not destroy the planet, right right, hopefully

1624
01:13:37,840 --> 01:13:42,120
Speaker 1: hopefully question mark dot dot dot great and this is

1625
01:13:42,120 --> 01:13:49,479
Speaker 1: the part where you cackle with Danny Great. Hey, Niseth,

1626
01:13:49,520 --> 01:13:53,920
Speaker 1: can we cut off his funding now? Please? Thank you?

1627
01:13:54,840 --> 01:13:58,080
Speaker 1: All right, Well, another interesting reminder. There are still lots

1628
01:13:58,120 --> 01:14:00,439
Speaker 1: of discover out there, at least a lot of data

1629
01:14:00,439 --> 01:14:02,240
Speaker 1: and a lot of sciences stiff through to look for

1630
01:14:02,360 --> 01:14:05,200
Speaker 1: things that we maybe didn't expect because the history of

1631
01:14:05,200 --> 01:14:07,439
Speaker 1: science is that it's always surprising us.

1632
01:14:07,680 --> 01:14:09,840
Speaker 2: It's always surprising, and it's always fantastic.

1633
01:14:10,120 --> 01:14:13,479
Speaker 1: It's stay tuned, and that's what we shouldn't destroyed. No comment,

1634
01:14:13,800 --> 01:14:15,360
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Thanks for

1635
01:14:15,400 --> 01:14:17,160
Speaker 1: joining us. See you next time.

1636
01:14:21,960 --> 01:14:24,759
Speaker 2: For more science and curiosity, come find us on social

1637
01:14:24,880 --> 01:14:28,799
Speaker 2: media where we answer questions and post videos. We're on Twitter,

1638
01:14:28,880 --> 01:14:32,519
Speaker 2: disc Org, Instant and now TikTok. Thanks for listening, and

1639
01:14:32,560 --> 01:14:35,320
Speaker 2: remember that Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe is a

1640
01:14:35,360 --> 01:14:39,920
Speaker 2: production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the

1641
01:14:40,000 --> 01:14:44,160
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your

1642
01:14:44,200 --> 01:14:44,960
Speaker 2: favorite shows.